Aspects of this board. Like, when a disagreeing poster seems to think he can appoint himself board thread evaluator.

Apparently, we have a disagreement. I’m baffled by your viewpoint, but I don’t expect you to care how I feel about your posting any more than I care how you feel about mine. I think the financial world is almost universally baffled by Fitch’s move. Paraphrasing one report I saw on Bloomberg yesterday - you could see a downgrade in ‘17 when tax cuts weren’t funded; in ‘20 when pandemic spending wasn’t funded; even in June when passing the X date seemed highly possible. But not now - not when governance metrics are actually improving slightly. Debt to gdp is actually down over the past 18 mths or so.

A broad bipartisan lineup of interviewees shared that view. Nobody understands the timing here. There is no possibility of default at all - not even a little, until next time somebody refuses to raise the phony, arbitrary debt ceiling. Which, again, whether you think this is a good thread or not, is the only thing that drives downgrades, ever, in the history of ratings on US debt. That pure simple fact remains true no matter how much you critique thread performances.

So why would Fitch do this now? How about because competent governance of a 330 mil person democracy requires compromise, a compromise was reached just before the X date, and the repub party instantly started shutting down congress to protest compromise. The fact that there was a compromise. And they claim they will shut down the govt as the fiscal year ends.

Please do detail dem contributions to that. We’re definitely only downgraded now because there was another bullshit, invented default crisis. It was invented by the repubs. Just like the only other time we were downgraded. And the downgrade came in spite of the compromise last month. Because one party is throwing a temper tantrum over the compromise. Any compromise. While debt to gdp has actually been declining.

There’s no both sidesing that.