The government has reached its debt limit of $14.3 trillion and now--NOW--Moody's Investor Services is warning about lowering our "triple A" credit rating if the debt ceiling isn't raised by early August?

Excuse my French, but where the hell was Moody's when we were piling on all this UNSUSTAINABLE debt?

The company certainly wasn¹t busy warning investors about Greece, Portugal or Ireland. 

NO-O-O... they were late to those parties, too and downgraded... after the fact.

To paraphrase Shakespeare, "Something's rotten in the state of Ratings Agencies."

Could there be some sort of unholy alliance between Tim Geithner, Treasury Secretary and former head of The New York Fed (where Moody's is based), and this latest new-found credit awareness on the part of Moody's?

Just asking.

Yesterday Mr. Geithner came down from his ivory tower just long enough to speak with House freshmen from both parties and pronounced, "I'm confident two things are going to happen this summer.  One is we're going to avoid a default crisis...and...we're going to reach agreement to our long-term fiscal plan."

Huh?  Has he listened to what's being said in the halls of Congress lately? 

The debt ceiling bill just failed with ALL Republicans voting against it and 87 Democrats chiming in for whatever political reason they cited.

There will continue to be an impasse between the parties as long as the administration pushes for miniscule spending cuts and higher taxes while Republicans insist on BIG spending cuts and no tax increase. 

The Republicans have beaten this slogan to death, but it nonetheless remains true--we don't have a revenue problem--we have a SPENDING problem.

And... we also have a ratings agency problem because anybody with a fifth grade education has to be asking... if a $14.3 trillion borrowing limit is dangerous, then how can increasing that borrowing make us a stronger fiscal entity?

There are things Mr. Geithner can do to stem off default, IF he and the administration choose to.

So why not give him a chance to finally earn his money?

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