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President Barack Obama laid the blame for the U.S. government's partial shutdown at the feet of House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner on Thursday...With 800,000 federal government employees forced into taking leave, some agencies have almost entirely shuttered, including NASA, the Commerce Department and the Environmental Protection Agency.

From Egan Jones: Synopsis: UNITED STATES (GOVT OF) EJR Sen Rating(Curr/Prj) AA-/ N/A Rating Analysis - 9/14/12 EJR CP Rating: A1+ Debt: $15.2B EJR's 1 yr. Default Probability: 1.2% Up, up, and away - the FED's QE3 will stoke the stock market and commodity prices, but in our opinion will hurt the US economy and, by extension, credit quality. Issuing additional currency and depressing interest rates via the purchasing of MBS does little to raise the real GDP of the US, but does reduce the value of the dollar (because of the increase in money supply), and in turn increase...

At the Federal Reserve’s last conference meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke gave the Fed’s outlook for the U.S. economy. Taxmageddon was one of Bernanke’s biggest concerns, as he warned of a “massive fiscal cliff.” Bernanke suggested that Congress “figure out ways to achieve the same long-run fiscal improvement without having it all happen at one date.” Bernanke’s statements echoed the CBO’s latest report on the economy that also warned of a “massive fiscal cliff”, one that would undoubtedly lead to a recession in 2013. Bernanke has made it clear in his past warnings to Congress...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has changed her public position on an issue that divided Democrats during the fight over raising the debt ceiling last summer. She now says that President Obama should use the 14th Amendment to raise the debt ceiling by fiat — to preserve the country’s credit rating and avoid another economically harmful brinksmanship over the country’s borrowing limit. “I would like to see the constitution used to protect the country’s full faith and credit,” she told a handful of columnists at a roundtable. According to Matt Yglesias, “She didn’t offer a legal argument in favor of...

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), a staunch fiscal conservative and Tea Party favorite, said he is certain that the United States will face another credit downgrade. "S&P's downgrade on us was right, matter of fact we're going to get another downgrade. I can tell you right now, you can have a great legal case for suing the rating agencies for not downgrading us again because we have not demonstrated the political will to solve the problems," said Coburn on CBS's midweek show "Face to Face," posted online Wednesday. The Oklahoma senator told CBS that he has "no doubt" that there will...

Blue collar Democratic voters, stuck taking depressing “staycations” because they can’t afford gas and hotels, are resentful of the first family’s 17 lavish vacations around the world and don’t want their tax dollars paying for the Obamas’ holidays, according to a new analysis of swing voters. “They view everything through their own personal situation and if they can’t afford to do it, they can’t enjoy it, they don’t like Obama using their tax dollars to benefit himself,” said pollster John McLaughlin. “In this case, they see him as out of touch. While they are struggling he’s not sharing in that...

NEW YORK, April 6 (Reuters) - Egan-Jones Ratings downgraded the credit level of the United States as Washington has struggled to reduce the federal debt burden, which is projected to surpass the size of the country's economy. The independent rating firm, which issued the downgrade late Thursday, said its senior debt rating on the United States is now AA, its third highest rating, down one notch from AA-plus. It also maintained a negative watch on the world's biggest economy as the federal debt load could rise to $16.7 trillion at the end of 2012. U.S. gross domestic product, in the...

That agenda is to lead us to European-style socialism. Despite the fact that socialism has caused the European economy to tank. Despite the fact its results have fomented rioting in the streets. Despite the fact that it has failed miserably. But Obama and his cohorts have an agenda, the agenda of the elites who feel they know better than the rest of us. In addition, they have the mistaken impression that any rights We the People may have, derive from government. They, as the ruling class will decide what rights we may or may not enjoy, a concept anathema to...

What happened? Obama and his advisers have cast the collapse of the talks as a republican failure. Boehner, unable to deliver, stepped away from the deal, simple as that. But interviews with most of the central players in those talks— some ofwhomwere granted anonymity to speak about the secret negotiations — as well as a review of meeting notes, e-mails and the negotiating proposals that changed hands, offer a more complicated picture of the collapse. Obama, nervous about how to defend the emerging agreement to his own democratic base, upped the ante in a way that made it more difficult...

<p>Will A be the new AA+? Perhaps, if the S&P follows through with its latest threat. Bloomberg reports that [Bloomberg material cannot be posted here] . . . .</p>

Following the failure of the supercommittee, the U.S. government’s AAA credit rating was placed on a “negative outlook” Monday by Fitch Ratings, indicating a more than 50 percent chance the country gets slapped with another downgrade in the next two years. “By postponing the difficult decisions on tax and spending until after forthcoming congressional and presidential elections, the scale and pace of required deficit reduction will consequently be greater,” Fitch said in a statement. “Conversely, failure to reach agreement in 2013 on a credible deficit reduction plan and a worsening of the economic and fiscal outlook would likely result in...

The president who is well on his way toward borrowing more money than any other president — the first president to downgrade the nation’s credit — had a late-night conference call with European leaders to chew them out for not meeting his standards when it comes to managing a nation’s money. From the London Daily Mail: “Barack Obama has read the riot act to the leaders of several European countries — saying more dramatic action is needed to avert a eurozone meltdown. The U.S. President made telephone calls to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and Italian President...

Ten Septembers have come and gone since that awful morning. But on this 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we are summoned once more to honor those we lost by keeping our country strong and true to their memory. Over the coming days, we will remember nearly 3,000 innocent victims — fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters who were simply going about their daily lives on a beautiful Tuesday morning. And we'll talk to our children about what happened on that day, and what's happened since. Like every American, I'll never forget how I heard the terrible...

As President Barack Obama’s approval rating reaches new lows with seemingly every tracking poll, the question of how he is going to win re-election is a high priority for the president and his administration. However, based on Thursday night’s address to a joint session of Congress, it appears Obama could be attempting to mimic former President Harry Truman’s 1948 campaign against a “do-nothing Congress.”

President Obama’s jobs speech represented the lowest ratings he’s received for any address to a joint session of Congress of his presidency. The speech garnered 31.5 million viewers, according to the website TVbythenumbers, which was slightly lower than his Sept. 2009 health care speech to Congress, which drew 32.1 million viewers and is probably the fairest comparison. But viewed against other addresses to Congress, it looks worse, and is part of a broader downward trend. During his first speech to a joint session of Congress in February 2009, Obama drew 52.4 million viewers. His first official State of the Union...

Obama got his 500,000,000,000.00 dollars today from the US Senate, thanks in no small part to Senator Son-of-a-Mitch McConnell, and Robo-Senator Reid-in-the-Wind. Obama had asked last night in his unfinished Jobs give-away bill , (i.e. "targeted") , for only 450,000,000,000.00 dollars. This is an obvious attempt to avoid a financial deadline. This timing of the speech, Joint Session, amount transferred, suggest a pattern of a sudden increase in spending by the Executive Branch of the US Government. It is now time to begin The Articles of Impeachment against President Obama to prevent further dereliction of financial duty and other neglected...

President Obama’s jobs speech represented the lowest ratings he’s received for any address to a joint session of Congress of his presidency. The speech garnered 31.5 million viewers, according to the website TVbythenumbers, which was slightly lower than his Sept. 2009 health care speech to Congress, which drew 32.1 million viewers and is probably the fairest comparison. But viewed against other addresses to Congress, it looks worse, and is part of a broader downward trend. During his first speech to a joint session of Congress in February 2009, Obama drew 52.4 million viewers. His first official State of the Union...

Presumptuous: He demanded – 17 times – that Congress immediately pass a bill no one has seen. Tired: The speech contained little new, just mostly recycled ideas or extensions of current programs that haven’t worked. Small: Its proposals, while expensive, offer little hope of really jump-starting the economy. Mind-boggling: Mr. Obama wants to drains hundreds of billions from Social Security for another stimulus. Slippery: It will all be paid for, the president said, but it’s up to a Congressional committee to figure out how. Misleading: These were just GOP ideas. Really? Republicans have proposed another $450 billion stimulus bill, Mr....

FBI Issues Search Warrants at California Solar Firm headquarters in Fremont as part of a joint operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Energy and the Office of Inspector General, FBI spokesman Peter Lee said. Lee told FoxNews.com that "multiple search warrants" were executed but said he could not provide details on what prompted the investigation. "Everything’s under seal," he said. The investigation comes one week after the company laid off 1,100 workers and filed for bankruptcy. The solar-panel manufacturer is now being sued by workers who abruptly lost their jobs. Solyndra LLC was once touted by President...