> It's worth noting unless somebody already said this that Japan was rated
> lower than the U.S. but could also sell debt at lower interest rates.
Exactly. The same tube-lights (a wonderful South Asian Anglophone term which means "dim bulb") who rated all that MBS/CDO crap triple A are now baying for austerity. The S&P statement is astonishingly open about this:
"In addition, the plan envisions only minor policy changes on Medicare and little change in other entitlements, the containment of which we and most other independent observers regard as key to long-term fiscal sustainability."
Translation: 30 years of falling real wages and $1 trillion in military-industrial boondoggles and trillions in Federal Reserve subsidies to busted bankster scam artists and trillions of future subsidies for the medical-health insurance-pharmaceutical complex isn't enough for the plutocrats, America also has to kill off its old people.
-- DRR