Erstellt am: 29. 7. 2011 - 14:25 Uhr

The Last Few Days of Patience.

America's current financial woes: The Reality Check team put themselves on Debt-Watch.

As I turned on CNN late last night anchor Wolf Blitzer was in his Situation Room. His countdown clock reminded the world that there were only 4 days to go. August 2nd has been looming on the doomsday calendar. It feels as if an asteroid has been spinning dangerously out of orbit and next Tuesday is when it’ll smack into Middle America.

US Media organizations love a sense of impending doom. Or does the debt drama give us this political narrative: the good guys (a president & his team appealing for compromise) and the bad guys (Tea Party activists who are about to flush America down the financial toilet since their mantra is: we don’t like spending money).

So let’s assume that the politicians haven’t been able to agree by next Tuesday, does America wake up to financial Armageddon? The US government has worked out a Plan B to fit this scenario, it’s just they are not saying very much about it yet. Like Berlin & Paris re-writing the rulebook a few weeks ago for Greece, there’s always an alternative isn’t there?

I mean that deadline of August 2nd came from the Administration in the first place. Can’t they just say let’s pencil in a date just before Christmas when Democrats & Republicans sing songs together under the tree. Maybe we’ll get more compromise then. There are two main reasons why August 2nd is the cut-off date. Let’s mention the people that’ll get really hurt first. There’s a $23 billion Social Security payment due on Aug 3rd. So that bill doesn’t get paid: that’s pension cheques, medicare, unemployment benefits…. you get the picture.

Secondly there are the ratings agencies who would normally give America a Triple A rating. That indicates the likelihood that country X would default on its debts is virtually zero. But if the US is heading towards such a scenario, the rating gets downgraded. That means the costs to America of borrowing money will shoot up and we’re talking billions extra. The irony of electing fiscal Tea Party conservatives to Congress and the result is their pride spun the county into the financial wilderness.

Average Americans are increasingly annoyed with the apparent inability of their elected officials to resolve the political crisis over raising the debt ceiling. Check out a report on the American financial woes as filed by FM4 Washington DC reporter Pricilla Huff...

APA

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