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The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows that 32% of the nation's voters now Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Thirty-seven percent (37%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of –5. The number who strongly disapprove inched up another point to the highest level measured to date and the overall Approval Index is at the lowest level yet for Obama  

Public approval of President Obama's job performance has dropped slightly this spring as Americans have grown increasingly concerned about unemployment and the federal budget deficit (NBC News/WSJ poll). The poll shows that 56 percent of Americans give Obama a thumbs-up on his performance as president, down from 61 percent percent in April. The proportion expressing disapproval rose to 34 percent from 30 percent. The telephone survey of 1,008 adults, conducted June 12-15, carries a margin for error of 3.1 percentage points. The shift, five months after Obama took office as president, follows continued bad news on the unemployment rate, which...

Long before the current financial crisis, nearly two years ago, a little-noticed cloud darkened the horizon for the US government. It was ignored. But now that shadow, in the form of a warning from a top credit rating agency that the nation risked losing its triple A rating if it did not start putting its finances in order, is coming back to haunt us. That warning from Moody’s focused on the exploding healthcare and Social Security costs that threaten to engulf the federal government in debt over coming decades. The facts show we’re in even worse shape now, and there...

With Rivals Ahead, Doubts for CNN’s Middle Road By BILL CARTER The election of Barack Obama does not seem to have ushered in a kinder, less-polarized environment in politics — or television. And that’s not a good break for CNN, a network whose strategy is to steer the middle course in its news coverage. CNN’s competitors have been finding more success pounding away at those poles — at least during prime time. Since the beginning of March, CNN has fallen behind both the longtime ratings leader, Fox News Channel, which, as the voice of disaffected conservatives, again has an imposing...

Ireland was stripped of its top AAA credit ranking and downgraded to AA+ by Standard & Poor’s(S&P) yesterday while being warned that it could drop further if Dublin fails to get its public finances under control. The former “Celtic Tiger” economy is the second eurozone country after Spain in January to lose its top ranking since the onslaught of the global downturn.Such a downgrade will increase Ireland’s borrowing costs. S&P said the Irish Government had underestimated the scale of its fiscal problems and the agency dismissed the possibility of a solution emerging at an emergency budget next week. “The downgrade...

Fitch Cuts Russia's Sovereign Debt Rating 05 February 2009 By Nadia Popova / Staff Writer Fitch downgraded Russia's sovereign rating on Wednesday, prompting scorn from Russian investors over whether international agencies could offer credible ratings in view of their apparent miscalculations before the global crisis. Fitch lowered Russia's foreign and local currency ratings by a notch to BBB -- two rankings above junk -- over concerns about dwindling foreign exchange reserves, falling oil prices and corporate debt refinancing. It was the first time that Fitch has cut the country's rating since 1998, when Russia devalued the ruble and defaulted on...

S&P cuts Russian corporate ratings after sovereign downgrade 14:36 | 09/ 12/ 2008 MOSCOW, December 9 (RIA Novosti) - Standard & Poor's said on Tuesday it had lowered long- and short-term counterparty credit ratings for a number of Russian-based banks to BBB/A-3 from BBB+/A2 with negative outlook. The institutions involved are Russia-based VTB Bank, Bank VTB 24, VTB-Leasing, Raiffeisenbank and UniCredit Bank The international rating agency said the move followed its decision on Monday to downgrade Russia's long and short-term sovereign foreign currency credit ratings from BBB+/A-2 to BBB/A-3 with a negative outlook over a plunge in Russia's international reserves...

Motorola Debt Downgraded to Junk Status ­Debt ratings agency, Standard and Poors (S&P) has dropped Motorola's long-term corporate credit rating to 'BB+' from 'BBB' - which is basically junk status - on the outlook for its mobile phone division. "The current rating action reflects continual operational challenges in the Mobile Devices unit, which are not likely to be reversed over the intermediate term, leading to depressed profitability and returns, adjusted debt leverage over 4x, and substantially diminished free cash flows." S&P also assigned a recovery rating of '3' to this debt, indicating the expectation for meaningful (50% to 70%) recovery...

Surprising. McCain-Obama drew less than Kerry-Bush. 2008: McCain-Obama: 33.2 2004: Kerry-Bush: 39.4 2000: Bush-Gore: 31.7 1996: Clinton-Dole: 31.6 1992: Clinton-Bush-Perot: 38.3 1988: Bush-Dukakis: 36.8 1984: Reagan-Mondale: 45.3 1980: Carter-Reagan: 58.9 1976: Ford-Carter: 53.5

Ex-SEC Official Blames Agency for Blow-Up of Broker-Dealers 'They constructed a mechanism that simply didn't work' By JULIE SATOW, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 18, 2008 http://www.nysun.com/business/ex-sec-official-blames-agency-for-blow-up/86130/ The Securities and Exchange Commission can blame itself for the current crisis. That is the allegation being made by a former SEC official, Lee Pickard, who says a rule change in 2004 led to the failure of Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Merrill Lynch. The SEC allowed five firms — the three that have collapsed plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley — to more than double the leverage they were allowed...

AIG shares slump, says 'everything on the table' Insurer may sell Transatlantic stake, other businesses to raise capital By Alistair Barr & John Spence, MarketWatch Last update: 5:42 p.m. EDT Sept. 12, 2008 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Insurance giant American International Group, beset by a record stock slump and a possible cut from ratings agency Standard & Poor's, said Friday it was reviewing its businesses and that "everything was on the table," suggesting it might sell assets to raise capital and avoid a crippling downgrade. The company had been preparing for a major reorganization announcement on Sept. 25, but on...

Fitch cuts financial strength rating of bond insurer MBIA to "AA" from "AAA" Fri Apr 4, 4:33 PM By Stephen Bernard, The Associated Press NEW YORK - Credit rating agency Fitch Ratings said Friday it cut the critical financial strength rating of MBIA Inc. because the bond insurer does not have enough spare capital to warrant a top-notch rating. Fitch cut the rating to "AA" from "AAA." The downgrade could make it difficult for MBIA to book new business, as bond insurers typically need the top-tier rating to attract customers. MBIA's rating was placed on negative outlook, which is a...

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Standard & Poor's Ratings Services on Friday revised its status on Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. and holding company FGIC Corp. to CreditWatch with negative implications from CreditWatch with developing implications. PMI Group (PMI: 5.92, 0.00, 0.0%) , Financial Guaranty Insurance's principal owner, said recently that it no longer views the company as a strategic investment and will not be participating in any recapitalization plan.

They say geography is destiny, but perhaps it is damnation as well. We have unveiled the American city that has fallen the farthest from grace in each of the seven deadly sins ( lust, gluttony, avarice, sloth, wrath, envy and pride). For each sin we stretched our imagination to find a workable proxy--murder rates for wrath, per capita billionaires for avarice--then culled the available data sources to rank the cities. Some of the results were surprising: Salt Lake City as America's Vainest City. Some were not: Detroit as America's Most Murderous. To view them on our interactive map, simply click...

Monolines given five days to find funds By Aline Van Duyn in Washington and Michael Mackenzie in New York Published: February 14 2008 14:54 | Last updated: February 14 2008 21:47 Eliot Spitzer, New York governor, on Thursday gave bond insurers three to five business days to find fresh capital, or face a potential break-up by state regulators who want to safeguard the municipal bond markets. Mr Spitzer’s warning came shortly before Moody’s Investors Service highlighted the concerns about the bond insurers by withdrawing its triple-A credit rating for privately held Financial Guaranty Insurance Company. However, the sting of Moody’s...

For the record...Right Wing News conducted their annual survey documenting the right's least favorite righties. Most interesting news of it is that Ron Paul came in as most hated. This oughtta get the Paul-lites fired up. Here's the list: 18) Ted Stevens (4) 18) Olympia Snowe (4) 18) Mel Martinez (4) 18) Sean Hannity (4) 18) Lincoln Chafee (4) 17) Bill O'Reilly (5) 14) Lindsey Graham (6) 14) George W. Bush (6) 14) Mitt Romney (6) 12) Arnold Schwarzenegger (9) 12) Rudy Giuliani (9) 8) Andrew Sullivan (11) 8) Chuck Hagel (11) 8) James Dobson (11) 8) Ann Coulter (11)...

FREEP This Site. A news source evaluation site called NewsTrust has been set-up to allow people to evaluate the "trust" level of various news sources. It has been largely been used by Liberals so far. "A non-profit initiative called Newstrust is developing a system for rating news from a very broad array of sources. And unlike previous efforts that employed teams of paid reviewers (a model that proved economically unviable), this one is a social network model which uses the intellect of the masses to rate all manner of news content and news sources" "If you look at Newstrust during...

Who supports Congress? Who are the people who comprise the 14% of Americans that still have a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the Democratic Congress? Last month, Gallup reported that Congressional job approval was at 14%, “…the lowest in Gallup’s history of this measure and the lowest of any of the 16 institutions tested…” Last week, a Zogby poll said that Congress was still languishing at that incredibly low approval rating (14% said they were "excellent" or "good;" 83% said they were "fair" or "poor.") They’re doing even worse than the Republicans were just before being...

How would you rate Cheney's performance overall? Excellent Good Fair Poor

Narrow focus draws 'PG' rating for Baptist-backed film By TERRY MATTINGLY Scripps Howard News Service 07-JUN-06 The Motion Picture Association of America is crystal clear when it describes why its "PG" rating exists _ it's a warning flag. "The theme of a PG-rated film may itself call for parental guidance," states the online explanation of the rating system. "There may be some profanity in these films. There may be some violence or brief nudity. ... The PG rating, suggesting parental guidance, is thus an alert for examination of a film by parents before deciding on its viewing by their children....