Call AAA to Rescue the Stranded Obama Administration

The Obama Administration is trying to defend itself from S&P's downgrade by claiming that S&P based its analysis on the projection that US debt would total $22.1 TRILLION in 2021, rather than $20 TRILLION, as the administration predicts.

Given the overwhelming evidence of the administration's ability to make accurate predictions about the economy over one- and two-year horizons, there's no reason to think the same people can accurately predict the size of our national debt 10 years down the road -- when all of the predictors will be long gone from their government jobs.

What's ahead in the next 10 years? Who knows? More wars? Probably. Higher aggregate medical expenditures by Medicare and Medicaid? Absolutely. How much higher? If we extrapolate the trend of the last decade, then spending in 2021 will break the bank.

It's amusing that S&P was villified for giving AAA ratings to mortgage securities that later defaulted. It's amusing because S&P is one of a handful of organizations that have a special government designation. They are Nationally Recognized Statistical Ratings Organizations.

What entity issued the National Recognition? The US government did. Thus, the government has given S&P its stamp of approval.

That stamp of approval meant that no investors questioned the accuracy of the AAA ratings given to mortgage securities containing many sub-prime loans. That oversight was essential to the goal of the government, which was to increase home ownership among people who historically were less likely to own homes and build personal wealth.

Rather than stick with well understood lending practices that demanded borrowers have a decent credit rating, reasonable job prospects and a substantial downpayment, the government legislated changes that allowed borrowers to borrow 100% of the purchase price of a home with nothing more than their "promise" to repay the money.

Now the Obama administration is in offended-mode, and it's trying to malign the S&P decision to reduce our national credit rating to AA+. A classic case of shooting the messenger.

Amid Criticism on Downgrade of U.S., S.&P. Fires Back

By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ and ERIC DASH
Published: August 6, 2011

The day after Standard & Poor’s took the unprecedented step of stripping the United States government of its top credit rating, the ratings agency offered a full-throated defense of its decision, calling the bitter stand-off between President Obama and Congress over raising the debt ceiling a “debacle.” It warned that further downgrades may lie ahead.

In an unusual Saturday conference call with reporters, senior S.& P. officials insisted the ratings firm hadn’t overstepped its bounds by focusing on the political paralysis in Washington as much as fiscal policy in determining the new rating. “The debacle over the debt ceiling continued until almost the midnight hour,” said John B. Chambers, chairman of S.& P.’s sovereign ratings committee.

Another S.& P. official, David Beers, added that “fiscal policy, like other government policy, is fundamentally a political process.”

Initial reactions from Congressional leaders suggested that S.& P.’s action was unlikely to force consensus on the fundamental divide over spending and taxes. Politicians on both sides used the decision to bolster their own long-standing positions.

Officials at the White House and Treasury criticized S.& P.’s move as based on faulty budget accounting that did not factor in the just-enacted deal for increasing the debt limit.

Gene Sperling, the director of the White House national economic council, called the difference, totaling over $2 trillion, “breathtaking” and said that “the amateurism it displayed” suggested “an institution starting with a conclusion and shaping any arguments to fit it.”

Even as the ratings agency insisted on Saturday that its move shouldn’t have come as a shock, it reverberated around the world. Officials from China to Europe scrambled to assess the downgrade’s impact on the already troubled global economy, and political leaders in the United States sought to frame the issue in their favor.

Republican presidential candidates on Saturday seized on the downgrade as a new line of criticism against President Obama, suggesting that ultimate responsibility rests in the Oval Office.

“It happened on your watch, Mr. President,” Representative Michele Bachmann said, drawing applause at an afternoon rally in Iowa. “You were AWOL. You were missing in action.”

In a statement, the White House made no mention of the downgrade. “We must do better to make clear our nation’s will, capacity and commitment to work together to tackle our major fiscal and economic challenges,” the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said.




The wrangling over S.& P.’s downgrade to AA+ from AAA stretched on for days. But interviews with both officials from the administration and S.& P. reveal sharply differing perceptions on whether a downgrade was imminent. The rating agency argued that their intentions had been plain for months if the government didn’t take strong action to curb the debt; administration officials claimed they were blindsided.

The drama, which would culminate late Friday and into the weekend, actually began to gather speed Wednesday, when S.& P. executives came to the Treasury Department to meet with a group of administration officials led by Mary J. Miller, the assistant secretary for financial markets.

At the meeting, the S.& P. executives walked the Treasury Department team through its analysis. Government debt was growing rapidly, they said, and the just-completed deal wasn’t going to do enough to slow it down, endangering the AAA rating.

As early as April, S.& P. had changed its credit outlook on the United States to negative. By July, S.& P. warned that if the government did not agree to a deficit reduction package of about $4 trillion, there was a one-in-two chance a downgrade.

Still Treasury officials claim they were taken by surprise on Wednesday. Just the day before, Ms. Miller and her team met at the Hay-Adams Hotel with a group of senior Wall Street executives who advise the Treasury on its borrowing. None of the members believed that the government’s credit rating would be lowered in the near-term.

On Thursday, the ratings agency informed the Treasury that its seven-person panel would meet Friday morning to assess the creditworthiness of the United States government.

Even then, one administration official said, “We didn’t think they would actually do it.”

At 8 a.m. Friday, S.& P. convened a global conference call of its sovereign rating committee including Mr. Beers, Mr. Chambers and others. By 10 a.m., they’d reached a majority decision — the United States no longer was entitled to its top rating. Mr. Beers would not say whether the verdict was unanimous.

Inside Treasury, meanwhile, John Bellows, an acting assistant secretary, flagged a concern over S.& P.’s methodology. In its analysis, S.& P. had projected the nation’s debt as a share of gross domestic product to reach 93 percent by 2021. That was around 8 percentage points higher than the figure administration officials believed the rating agency should have used — what they now call a $2.1 trillion error.

In a Treasury blog entry, Mr. Bellows wrote that the difference raised “fundamental questions about the credibility and integrity of S.& P.’s ratings action.”

Around 5:30 p.m., S.& P. officials called the group of Treasury officials. “You were right,” Mr. Chambers told them, but said he was prepared to proceed because the revisions didn’t meaningfully affect S.& P.’s conclusion.

In one final effort to prevent what was once unthinkable from becoming inevitable, the Treasury officials again pressed S.& P. to reconsider. At 8 p.m., the ratings agency sent them the final press release on the downgrade. By 8:20 p.m., the news was out.

“For those who follow the fiscal situation of the United States, this shouldn’t be news to anyone,” Mr. Chambers said.