Economist Dean Banker notes:
Wall Street will suffer more than anyone from a default and it will not let it happen. The public should know this, certainly Wall Street does.
No wonder the fatcats running the giant banks which received tens of trillions in bailouts, loans and guarantees from the American public are screaming loudly that the debt ceiling must be raised.
Robert Reich points out:
Why has Standard & Poor's decided now's the time to crack down on the federal budget -- when it gave free passes to Wall Street's risky securities and George W. Bush's giant tax cuts for the wealthy, thereby contributing to the very crisis its now demanding be addressed?
Could it have anything to do with the fact that the Street pays Standard & Poor's bills?
Remember, the big 3 government-sponsored rating agencies routinely took bribes as their normal business model, committed massive fraud which greatly contributed to the financial crisis, covered up improper ratings after the fact, and otherwise sold their soul (in their own words). And see this and this.
Some complain about the poor sucking on the government teat.
But the fact that Wall Street controls the rating agencies, and the rating agencies are now creating an artificial emergency sounds like the powers-that-be - the giant banks which run this country - are trying to protect their government teat of perpetual bailouts from the public coffers.
And of course, they are the ones calling for slashing of spending which helps the public. Even though - as conservative writer Michael Rivero points out:
Social Security is not "unfunded" nor is it an "entitlement." That is YOUR money in that trust fund. You worked for it, and it was taken out of all your paychecks your entire working life.The debt crisis might be real ... I've been warning about it for years (and see this and this).
The Social Security Trust fund invested your money by loaning it to the US Government, which is the largest single holder of US Government debt. But the US Government is already in default in fact, as the actual tax revenues have not even come close to the projections on which the budgets were drawn up.
So the US Government has looked at all the entities they owe money to and decided that stiffing the American people is the least likely to cause them harm. They will pay the bankers and they will pay foreign nations and they will continue to bail out Wall Street for the mortgage-backed securities fraud by embezzling your retirement money you gave them in trust. The US Government is robbing you to save the private central bank! [i.e. the big banks. See this and this.]
The potential downgrade to America's credit is real ... I've been warning about that for years, as well.
But the way that the rating agencies and Wall Street are approaching the debt ceiling debate is a scam. See this, this and this.
After all, they aren't even discussing the spending cuts which must be enacted to reduce our debt:
(1) Ending the imperial wars, which reduce - rather than strengthen - national security (and see this and this);
(2) Ending the never-ending bailouts for Wall Street;
(3) Prosecuting fraud and clawing back the ill-gotten gains;
(4) Ending the Bush tax cuts, which are hurting the economy; and
(5) Slashing pensions for public employees, at least when they are pegged to an artificially "spiked" final year's salary.