Today the US stock markets fell again, as they have for the last several weeks, and it has nothing to do with the “deficit” and everything to do with the game of chicken that the GOP has been waging with not only increasing the debt limit but also the upcoming 2012 Federal Budget. One needs only recall that the budget deficit was well over 100% in the final years of World War II, and the National Debt incurred by that war weighed upon the economy throughout the fifties, yet we managed to recover without having to go through a serious recession (and without dismantling Social Security either).
What the rating agencies Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s have explicitly stated in their warnings is that the twin issues of refusal to come to terms with the debt limit and an almost certain deadlock on the 2012 budget will make a ratings downgrade mandatory. Hear that, GOP? Are you listening, Paul Ryan? Got your hearing aid plugged in, Mitch McConnell?
The GOP are like eight-year-old boys playing with matches in a hay barn. They are determined to wreck Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and income stability for all Americans who make less than one million dollars a year, and they don’t care what they destroy to achieve their aims.
The only ray of sun in all this mess is that the GOP have committed the colossal blunder of making the Ryan Budget Plan the litmus test for any viable presidential candidate. Good luck with that guys. With the Ryan Budget and Sarah Palin, who needs enemies?