Standard and Poor Showing

So Standard and Poor's has downgraded US long term debt.

That plainly represents a political judgment rather than an economic one. S&P explains it this way:
“In our view, the difficulty in framing a consensus on fiscal policy weakens the government’s ability to manage public finances and diverts attention from the debate over how to achieve more balanced and dynamic economic growth in an era of fiscal stringency and private-sector deleveraging (ibid). A new political consensus might (or might not) emerge after the 2012 elections, but we believe that by then, the government debt burden will likely be higher, the needed medium-term fiscal adjustment potentially greater, and the inflection point on the U.S. population’s demographics and other age-related spending drivers closer at hand.”

Pardon me if I don't genuflect toward the rating agency that gave a triple A rating to bundled sub prime mortgages. That mistake helped bring our entire economy to its knees. And, as Robert Reich points out here, if S&P had done its job and accurately assessed the risk, the bubble wouldn't have been so large and so destructive.

The downgrade could be very bad news for every American with any debt. It is a direct consequence of S&P's previous failure, coupled with irresponsible Republican intransigence.

We won't know until Monday how this news will affect the market for US Treasury bills, notes and bonds, all of which have been trading at very low interest rates. We also won't know until the Asian markets open Sunday evening (our time) how equity markets will react.