They like a little drama on Capitol Hill – politics, as they say over there, is show business for ugly people – and all the participants seemed to enjoy the attention as long as they thought they could get the credit and someone else would get the blame. But the United States was never going to default on its debts.
So we got a lot of grandstanding out front and a lot of arm-twisting out the back, while Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the Senate and the White House waited to see who would blink first. And wondered whether whatever short-term fudge was eventually agreed would help their own chances of re-election when they face the voters.
Barack Obama called the deal “a victory for the American people”, but in the corridors of Congress it was clear from the smiles and the slaps on the back that the Republicans, with the exception of a few hardliners making common cause with the Tea Party movement, were happier than the Democrats. Raúl Grijalva, a left-leaning Democrat who represents Arizona’s 7th congressional district, condemned a deal which “trades people’s livelihoods for the votes of a few unappeasable right-wing radicals”. Emanuel Cleaver, a United Methodist minister who represents Missouri’s 5th district, described it as a “sugar-coated Satan sandwich”.
President Obama was forced to bite the burger, partly because it was the only meal in town, but mostly because he couldn’t muster the votes for anything else. He was also forced to warn of the dangers of the US losing its coveted triple A credit rating.
Which has led to more questions – and more criticism – of the part being played in the global financial crisis by credit ratings agencies such as Moody’s, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s.
As Bernard Purcell reveals in his report on page 2, these unelected agencies, which are answerable to no one, threatened that, unless the US cut spending by at least $4 trillion, they would downgrade its rating to double A, making borrowing that much more expensive. That is a sword of which Damocles would have been proud.
It is wrong that these new masters of the financial universe are trying to dictate to elected governments how they should run their economies.
It is wrong that they are trying to tear apart a deal struck by Germany, France and the International Monetary Fund to rescue Greece.
And it is time to over-ride the ratings agencies and shove their sugar-coated Satan sandwich back into the bowels from which it came.
