GOP's 'Political Insanity' Caused S&P Downgrade

Standard & Poor's downgrade of America's credit rating represents a new factor in America's creditworthiness—"political insanity," writes Edmund Andrews in the National Journal. Indeed, Andrews notes that S&P explicitly cited politics in its downgrade: “The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed,” said the S&P report.

Although the S&P report did not single out any party, "it’s hard to read the S&P analysis as anything other than a blast at Republicans," he writes. One major factor causing the downgrade was S&P deciding that Congress would likely make the Bush tax cuts permanent. But even more than numbers, the S&P report is a harsh condemnation of the GOP's political warfare. "Even if the fiscal and inflationary risks of the United States are still tolerable to global investors, the political risks may not be," writes Andrews. (More debt ceiling stories.)