“Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services today said it placed its ‘AAA’ long-term and ‘A-1+’ short-term sovereign credit ratings on the United States of America on CreditWatch with negative implications. The CreditWatch action reflects our view of two separate but related issues. The first issue is the continuing failure to raise the U.S. government debt ceiling so as to ensure that the government will be able to continue to make scheduled payments on its debt obligations. The second pertains to our current view of the likelihood that Congress and the Administration will agree upon a credible, medium-term fiscal consolidation plan in the foreseeable future. On May 16, 2011, the U.S. government reached its Congressionally mandated ceiling for federal debt of $14,294 billion. Since then, the government has undertaken exceptional measures to avoid breaching the debt ceiling. Secretary of Treasury Timothy Geithner wrote, “The unique role of Treasury securities in the global financial system means that the consequences of default would be particularly severe….Even a short-term default could cause irrevocable damage to the American economy.” The Treasury currently estimates that it will have exhausted these exceptional measures on or about Aug. 2, 2011, at which time it will either have to curtail certain current expenses or risk missing a scheduled payment of interest or principal on Treasury securities held by the public…Congress and the Administration are debating various fiscal consolidation
proposals. At the high end, budget savings of $4 trillion phased in over 10 to 12 years proposed by the Adminstration, (separately) by Congressional leaders, as well as by the Fiscal Commission in its December 2010 report, if accompanied by growth-enhancing reforms, could slow the deterioration of the U.S. net general government debt-to-GDP ratio, which is currently nearing 75%. Under our baseline macroeconomic scenario, net general government debt would reach 84% of GDP by 2013. (Our baseline scenario assumes near 3% annual real growth and a post-2012 phaseout of the December 2010 extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.) Such a percentage indicates a relatively weak government debt trajectory compared with those of the U.S.’ closest ‘AAA’ rated peers (France,
Germany, the U.K., and Canada).”