Standard and Poor's Global Head of Soverign Ratings, one David Beers, "completely rejects" the Obama administration's assertions that any mistakes whatsoever were made in its report on US bonds, much less simple math errors
A transcript of the audio from public radio's Marketplace is below the fold.
The administration characterizes S&P as incompetent, while S&P calls the administration liars.
If these are such simple math errors obvious to any 5th grader, why can't we see them?
Audio begins at 6:47.
Marketplace: Pointing out specifically the mistake you guys made in measuring against the wrong baseline the two trillion dollar mistake to quote the White House.
David Beers: Oh yeah by the way we completely reject that characterization of what happened.
MP: All right, but, but the fact is you got the numbers wrong as you were going in the White House.
DB: No that is not the case. We looked at the savings that the CBO estimated and ahh we ran some projections one way and the treasury suggested to us it would be better to run them another way and ahh so when you run the numbers different ways your gonna come up with slightly different results. Nobody knows of course when you're projecting govt budget numbers which are very large what the correct number is ultimately gonna be
Reuters characterized a conference call with S&P in a way that hardly sounds like a elementary math error:
Reuters
The figure comes from two different economic scenarios forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office -- one that assumes government discretionary spending will grow at the same pace as GDP, and another that assumes it will expand at the pace of consumer inflation, said John Chambers, the head of S&P's sovereign ratings committee.
Chambers said S&P had initially used the first scenario to make up for revenue losses that the government is expected to incur, including from Bush-era tax cuts that S&P believes will remain in place in 2013.
After consultations with the Treasury Department, S&P switched to the scenario with a lower pace of discretionary spending. Chambers said, however, that this was not meaningful enough to make the agency change its decision to downgrade the United States.
Whether the administration economists who earlier insisted on basic math errors in the report will dispute this characterization is unclear.
If confirmed as fact, this would indicate that the Obama Administration sees no real increase in discretionary spending at all over the next 10 years.
Cartoons depicting 1+1=1 as appeared on the front page of this site patronize the readership without shedding light.
Remember that before S&P brought us the housing crisis, S&P brought us Enron and nonetheless seem to have done well for themselves over the years which is all the more reason that the "error-filled" draft report must be released.