Moody’s Investors Service, a leading credit rating agency, warned in a report on Monday that the tax cut compromise could imperil the U.S. government’s top Aaa rating, though a downgrade remains highly unlikely.
The Moody’s report pointed to provisions such as a temporary payroll tax holiday and extensions of unemployment insurance and the Bush-era tax cuts as likely to produce “substantially higher budget deficits,” even accounting for an expected boost to economic growth from the deal.
“Unless there are offsetting measures, the package will be credit negative for the U.S. and increase the likelihood of a negative outlook on the U.S. government’s Aaa rating during the next two years,” the report said.
Unfunded deficit spending. A temporary stay of some tax rates, and an increase in others.
The President decries those who agitate for “purity” (gee, where else have I heard that?) as “sanctimonious”; but what we are fighting for is principle — and we recognize that a “compromise” for the sake of compromising is a Pyrrhic victory, and one that only makes worse the underlying problems it ostensibly sets out to address.
Subsidies for ethanol, NASCAR, Samoa; “tax credits” for people who don’t pay federal income tax; $200-$300 billion in new, unfunded spending… This deal is an establishment middle finger to the very people who brought the GOP back to power.
And the response should be to primary every Republican who votes to increase taxes and spending.
We’re doomed.
The thing about legislation? It’s malleable.
Keep the lame ducks busy with pretty lights and fooforaw. When they go away, kill all this crap as dead as Julius Caesar.
What Moodys is saying is that this failshit fiasco is jeopardizing the good faith and credit of out once-great little country.
does Paul Ryan think Moody’s is just joshing? Does John Cornyn? What about Richard Shelby?
None of these worthless pieces of shit were elected to play chicken with our little country’s credit rating. So why the fuck are they?
Even a lead-by-following-where-others-go type like Romney thinks this a bad deal.
I’m confused. The way to keep a great credit rating is to raise taxes and cut spending. That credit rating would then make it less expensive to borrow, which we’d need less of anyways.
The way to stimulate the economy is to cut taxes and raise spending, but that requires borrowing, and risks making borrowing much more expensive.
I have yet to hear how cutting spending – now – will do anything but tank the economy and raise unemployment?
You can’t hear if you’re not listening.
(Or if your deafened by pseudo-Marxist faith in the power of government.)
You’re disingenuous and confused, Alex.
Cutting taxes — more than temporarily (per Milton Friedman) — stimulates investment (and so spending). Deficit spending, on the other hand — spending money you don’t have on top of having spent other money you don’t have — is not so much spending as it is incurring debt.
what is profoundly unstimulative are temporary tax policies what change with the wind
once this ridiculous farce becomes law I’ll boost my 401k withholding 2% so I don’t become the government’s little bitch and the next year or the year after or the year after when the government cuts my pay 2% I won’t miss it.
The way to keep a great credit rating is to not borrow more than you can pay back.
Oops. Too late.
By the government? Says who?
Other than, y’know, the government.
ask warren g harding about that roaring 20’s thing
Deficit spending is the way that Reagan got the economy roaring. It was also a little deficit spending program known as WWII that finally put an end to the depression. This is pretty basic fellas.
alex, imagine you were not on the public dole and you had money or a job or both. Let’s call that your personal economy. Now let’s say that you love cable TV and unlimited texting. Now let’s imagine that you spend more on cable than you do on paying obligations like electricity and rent. Now let’s imagine that you see that you can add Cinemax for 3 months free as long as you sign a contract for 2 years. So imagine that you stop paying your electric bill so that you can pay the new premium channel charge. Now let’s imagine that your personal economy has really taken a hit because you’re cold and sitting in the dark and you can’t watch the new HBO Original Series.
It’s a trick question. You don’t have to imagine. You’re already doing it.
I’m willing to wager that I make quite a bit more than you.
Now imagine that I have money, and I consistently make a 15% return on my investments. And also imagine that I can borrow money @ 4%.
(hint – I don’t make 15% by giving losers money so they can study the effects of cow farts on the climate)
What do I do next?
I’m willing to wager that I make quite a bit more than you.
Way to get into the spirit of imagining alex!! Good job!
Hey, I see we’re imagining together!! Well done!
And that, my friends, is called common ground.
no it was fdr ditching all of his idiot programs of the 1930’s
Deficit spending is the way that Reagan got the economy roaring
Remember to click your heels three times while repeating that mantra.
It was also a little deficit spending program known as WWII that finally put an end to the depression.
You have to have the only fully functional industrial economy in the world if you’re hoping for similar results in the subsequent recovery.
I should think the nature of the deficit at the time of the deficit spending is an important variable in any economic equation.
Are you saying that the industrial economies of the U.K., Germany, and Japan were crippled by the war, and that had something to do with our economic success afterwards? Get outta here!
Subsidies for ethanol, NASCAR, Samoa; “tax credits” for people who don’t pay federal income tax; $200-$300 billion in new, unfunded spending…
This is what Alex thinks will restore our nation to fiscal health. This is what you’re trying to argue with.
That pig won’t sing. Ever.
There’s all kinds of quantitative and qualitative variables that need to be taken into account and controlled for before we can say tax cuts=stimulus=deficit spending. But there isn’t really any point in going into it, is there, because what we have with Alex is a guy saying “potatos, yams, it’s all fruit salad.”
Mr. Instapundit learned me up about the temporary workers yesterday
wowsers that is bad news terrible news awful news
I thought.
But today propaganda whore Viv Schiller’s National Soros Radio helps me with the perspective to where it’s not so bad in fact this is giddy exciting happy news of joyness and I am excited to share this with you so you guys can also partake in the joyness.
The joy of temping! Yay! But it’s not just joyous – it’s zeitgeisty!
You may want to read that twice to fully appreciate the dumb but read on for this gem as well…
She’ll change her mind when they start paying her in play money.
It’s good that Obama is a temp.
You were born after 1988, weren’t you?
It’s good that Obama is a temp.
It’s bad that Obama thinks of his work as a kind of art performance.
I heart my part time tempiness, but it’s not for most People.ie anyone that has to support themselves or others.
And my current assignment is the first long term thing to not turn into a permanent gig, but it’s not for lack of trying.
*snort*
Gubmint worker?
Prolly one of those dead-eyed zombies standing behind Me-chelle in the other thread.
today bumblefuck met with shitheads Warren Buffett and Bill Gates and also Bill’s ho. They discussed how to cajole billionaires into giving their moneys away to the glory of the state.
What this means for you and me is dick.
Nonsense. It was pent-up consumer demand subsequent to WWII and the resultant redirection of resources to filling that demand that ended the depression.
It was pent-up consumer demand subsequent to WWII and the resultant redirection of resources to filling that demand that ended the depression.
Under rationing, consumers could purchase very limited amounts of the materials they needed for a comfortable existence.
Under hyperinflation, consumers can purchase very limited amounts of the materials they need for a comfortable existence.
I think I finally understand where Alex is coming from. And that thought frightens me terribly. Where’s the bourbon?
The interesting thing about billionaires that advocate higher taxes is they’re mostly giving their own personal fortunes to charitable foundations and not, you know, the government.
I get so-whatted when I mention this, as if only Bill Gates or Warren Buffett could donate to the US government. I say: let all of the rich Democrats pay a higher capital gains tax and higher income taxes directly to the US Treasury, if they think they’re not paying enough tax. It’s not going to solve the current problem, but it might just shut them up about how much tax they’re not paying.
Which would be a plus.
warrenb, billg lookey
http://fms.treas.gov/faq/moretopics_gifts.html
I say: let all of the rich Democrats pay a higher capital gains tax and higher income taxes directly to the US Treasury, if they think they’re not paying enough tax.
That kind of talk gets young Republicans booted off campus when they apply it to cookie sales.
I think a 36 million man military with a 2000 ship navy, 30,000 fighter jets and 10,000 bombers, would be the only good way to spend this size deficit.
Tasking them with the total destruction of the industrial capacity of every nation that threatens us or our allies in any way would go a long ways toward there being a great turnaround for our own industries.
Way to go.
Be more cost effective to just start nuking people, don’t you think?
What the hell is a temporary divorce?
What the hell is a temporary divorce?
I believe that’s Hollywood-speak for “the wife’s outta town”.
watch the credit rating fall
link
sorry I just noticed I forgotted the link for the stupid NPR article
From orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.
I believe that means the divorced, like the married or the employed, don’t stay that way.
Impermanency is the new permanency! Be intransigent about your transience!
For tomorrow may bring sorrow, so tonight let us be gay!
(we’ll OD before the bill arrives, if we’re lucky)
NTTAWWT
You know your Ernie loves you Slarti-baby!
“In the office there’s a guy named Melvin
He pretends that I am Murphy brown…”
alex walter eats his own boogers.
From the link:
The Moody’s report also noted the risk that the two-year extension of the Bush-era tax cuts could become permanent, as the issue will resurface in a presidential election year. “A permanent extension of the tax cuts alone (without other measures) could result in a considerable increase in deficits and debt levels unless other measures to reduce deficits are adopted,” the report said.
This is where I’d urge some caution in promoting anything they have to say. This is a separate branch of Moody’s but it still echoes Zandi’s nonsense. See here:
They could care less how the the deficit is closed. Wait… correction… with the political hackery involved, yeah, they’d definitely like to close the deficit by raising taxes.
Damn it, second paragraph should have been blockquoted.
Thanks for the laugh.
bh – it is disgusting that they turn to these, essentially, partisan hacks to make economic forecasts.
Absolutely disgusting, JD. And Zandi is the worst of the bunch.
Thankfully, I do not pay attention to clowns like that, or I would be been out buying GM stock with Thor.
I would have been … typing sucks.
Roselyn Sanchez. Jessalyn Gilsig.
Stop, or I will taze you in the face.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0761052/resumephotos?v=me709401523
You can thank me later.
This Roselyn Sanchez will require further study.
http://www.vivagoal.com/images/wallpapers/roselyn-sanchez-70.jpg
Now, you all owe me.
Nice, and thanks! JD.
But you’ll be seeing this one up close and personal-like come Sunday.
No need to bring any grease. )
Well, as long as we’re going there.
I hate midgets, serr8d.
bh wins. i am speechless.
Jones-Drew can play handball against a curb.
Because he’s so short.
bh – That link immediately went to my Top 10 all-time favorites.
You’re also a banana fan?
(I kid, I kid.)
That image has been delicately photoshopped.
and the problem with that is …. ?
You’re right. NTTAWWT.
Oh, no problem at all. <a href="”>Delicate pshoppery is best, no?
That was fail. This isn’t.