by Clifford F. Thies

Evening of Downgradin'
(apologies to Barry MacGuire)

Yeah, my blood's so mad feels like coagulatin'
I'm sitting here just contemplatin'
I can't twist the truth, we’re a bankrupt nation
Our economy suffers from too much regulation
And entrepreneurs fear being served with litigation
Because of quantitative easing, we’re gonna get inflation
The gubmit is crazy with all its legislation

And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
Ah, you don't believe
We're on the eve
of downgradin’.

It's official. The government of the USSA has been downgraded. No longer AAA, it's now AA+. Who knows what's next. The S&P cited rising debt, political risk and negative outlook, in announcing the downgrade.

Standardandpoors.com

On the same day, President Barack Whom? Obama called for more deficit spending including extending unemployment benefits once again. Oh, and he said it's a good thing that the unemployment rate fell from 9.2 to 9.1 percent this past month, being incapable of understanding that the drop was because another 200,000 Americans stopped looking for a job because they don't think they find one.

In the meanwhile, over in Italy, Prime Minister Berlusconi has restored a degree of calm to the European markets by calling for a balanced budget by 2013. The USSA, according to the Great One, will instead continue with trillion dollar deficits for as far into the future as they project the budget.

Editor's note - Dr. Thies is a distinguished professor of economics at Shenandoah Univ. in Virginia, (with an occasional "whacky college professor" streak.)