Tea Party Congress – Time To Take The Keys

 Rep. Michele Bachmann - Leader of Tea Party Caucus

The Tea Party members of Congress have shown that they are not fit to lead and govern. These folks don’t understand the consequences of their actions and behavior. The very people that put them in office will suffer from the effects of the United States credit downgrade through possibly higher interest rates for everything.

Clearly the political dysfunction that Standard and Poors cited in their downgrade decision referenced how the once routine increase of the debt ceiling was held hostage for other purposes. Now that process may be par for every debt ceiling increase. Okay guys, learn to yield when the road gets to a suitable exit or hand over the keys before you drive all of us over a cliff.

Just like when families need to have conversations with a elderly relatives about giving up their car keys because they are no longer safe drivers, someone needs to have that discussion with the Tea Party Congress members. The Tea Party members flunked their governing test and drove the country into a tree and dented it badly. The United States is still functional, but we can’t risk having these guys continually grabbing the steering wheel when we are trying to drive through dangerous terrain.

Who can talk to this group? Speaker of the House John Boehner has shown that they don’t listen to him as he was rebuffed at every turn. Boehner finally had to enlist the help of Democrats in order to prevent the United States from defaulting on its debt obligations as the Teas Party members still voted no. Don’t count on Michele Bachmann to speak reasonably because scoring political points is more important than the country’s future. Mitt Romney will only speak after the dust settles so that he knows what plays best. It’s really like parents laughing at the bad behavior of children a calling it cute as they vandalize the neighbor’s property.

The reasonable Republicans are staying out of it and will allow the extreme element to implode from their own intransigence. Hopefully the United States can survive this experiment in roadblock and hostage taking politics ushered in during the 2010 elections.

S&P U S Credit Downgrade – Warning On Investigation?

Should the world trust a downgrade of the credit rating of the United States from a credit rating agency that helped put America into its current financial condition by giving prime credit ratings to bundles of subprime debt trading instruments? The implosion of the mortgage backed security trading business wrecked the economy.

Now one of the credit rating agencies downgrades the AAA rating of the United States citing the political climate as one of the reasons. Excuse me, aren’t you the same guys that stamped your seal of approval on what turned out to be a near pyramid level debt instrument called Collateralized Debt Obligations consisting of bundled home loans both prime and sub-prime? When the dominoes fell, credit froze and jobs along with retirement accounts values melted away like butter. Some asked how these risky instruments earned the highest rating from agencies like Standard & Poors.

The United States Department of Justice is curious as well and so is the SEC. Now this credit rating agency seems to be acting out by not only downgrading the credit raring of the United States but also telegraphing other dire things that may come. Is this the big showdown? I will not just hold your credit rating hostage, but I will hurt you badly if you mess with me.

An article titled SEC investigates role of ratings agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor's aheadof the financial crisis  August 7 by Richard Blackden details how the SEC is looking into the role of credit rating agencies in the mortgage backed security collapse.

Maybe the real question is, given the mortgage backed security credit rating debacle, when will the credibility and power given to the credit rating agencies be downgraded?