Bloomberg News Analysts (Roubini, Ritholtz, Truglia, etc.) Liveblog re: S&P Downgrade

[ProSense]

Bloomberg News Analysts (Roubini, Ritholtz, Truglia, etc.) Liveblog re: S&P Downgrade

byAddison

Nouriel Roubini feels S&P jumped the gun, and didn't take into account the fact that the debt ceiling did get raised. Barry Ritholtz feels S&P acted unprofessionally, were not acting as analysts or credit rating agencies in this, and this is political opportunism. He says if you look at the ordering of the ratings they make NO sense -- these other countries should not be above the US. Roubini notes that potential growth in US is higher than Europe and Japan, and wonders if other nations can credibly maintain their S&P ratings.

Vincent Truglia (former Moody's Sovereign Debt Ratings Head) just on Bloomberg noting that (a) it likely won't matter too much, (b) there's no reason for the USA to be worried about debt or deficit in the near-time, and (c) this may actually free up the United States to do things it had previously been unable/afraid to do regarding stimulus measures.

We'll see.

Many confused about the statutory effect (how many inter-institutional financial rules are written assuming US Gov't at AAA?).

Ritholtz notes the absolute absurdity of downgrading the Federal Reserve, which can print its own money. Roubini notes that values of the Fed might be lower than before because it holds downgraded assets, but agrees that downgrading the Fed makes no sense. The two of them going back and forth about how silly this is gets entertaining at times because they seem about to laugh at how ridiculous the downgrade is. For some reason Bloomberg has an old owlish looking man (Keene) asking them questions from the studio about whether the US is a banana republic now. Roubini and Ritholtz answer, "no".

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Interesting stuff!

[ProSense]

1. Robert Reich: Why S&P Has No Business Downgrading the U.S.

Why S&P Has No Business Downgrading the U.S.

Friday, August 5, 2011

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Why did S&P do it?

Not because America failed to pay its creditors on time. As you may have noticed, we avoided a default.

And not because we might fail to pay our bills at the end of 2012 if tea-party Republicans again hold the nation hostage when their votes will next be needed to raise the debt ceiling. This is a legitimate worry and might have been grounds for a downgrade, but it’s not S&P’s rationale.

S&P has downgraded the U.S. because it doesn’t think we’re on track to reduce the nation’s debt enough to satisfy S&P — and we’re not doing it in a way S&P prefers.

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Pardon me for asking, but who gave Standard & Poor’s the authority to tell America how much debt it has to shed, and how?

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