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The Justice Department is about to put the squeeze on the Standard & Poor's credit rating service for the tune of $1billion, roughly its 2014 profit, and a fine meant to send a message, according to a Jan. 12 report in The New York Times. The message: Do not tangle with the Obama administration. The charge: Standards & Poor's analysts misrepresented their sincere opinion of securities, and instead downplayed the amount of risk associated with the securities, specifically Residential Mortgage-Back Securities and Collateral Debt Obligations, in order to ingratiate themselves to the companies issuing the securities. This charge, which Attorney...

Monster Prediction From BofA: Another US Debt Downgrade Is Coming In Just A Few Weeks Joe Weisenthal | Oct. 22, 2011, 7:04 AM | 4,055 | 48 In an analyst note, Bofa/ML Ethan S. Harris drops a bit of a bombshell prediction: We expect a moderate slowdown in the beginning of next year, as two small policy shocks—another debt downgrade and fiscal tightening—hit the economy. The “not-so-super” Deficit Commission is very unlikely to come up with a credible deficit-reduction plan. The committee is more divided than the overall Congress. Since the fall-back plan is sharp cuts in discretionary spending, the...

While continuing to cast doubt on the credibility of Standard & Poor’s, several Democrats on Sunday said there is an even greater culprit in the downgrade of the nation’s credit rating: the tea party. “I believe this is, without question, the tea party downgrade,” Sen. John F. Kerry, Massachusetts Democrat, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, a day that also saw mounting anxieties in world markets over the downgrade among myriad other economic woes worldwide. Some of the world’s top financial ministers issued a joint statement Sunday night committing themselves to preserve the stability of financial markets and...

Should anything happen to the Obamas' Portugese water dog Bo, perhaps the First Family could adopt Jeff Glor as a pet parrot. The weekend Early Show weekend co-host proved the perfect White House mimic this morning. Glor dutifully echoed the Obama admin line, dismissing as "political" Standard & Poor's downgrade of the US government's credit rating. In support of his point, Glor twice mockingly referred to the fact that the country of Liechtenstein now has a better credit rating than the US. And your point is, Jeff? View video after here.