It's Not Dark,Yet, But It's Getting There*

*Bob Dylan

**For the first time in our history, America has lost its Triple-A bond rating. Standard & Poors downgraded US bonds to AA+ rating. Countries now with higher ratings are Canada, the United Kingdom and France. When Standard & Poors notified the Treasury,an intense argument broke out because American officials found out that S&P had made a $2 trillion mistake in calculating our debt.

**S&P gave several reasons for the downgrade. The key was that "Republicans saying that they refuse to accept any tax increases as part of a larger deal." They specifically cited that a majority of Republicans in each chamber refuse to go along with any tax hikes in the future.

**Secondly, they concluded that the debt ceiling issue had become too politicized, which cast doubt on the future.

**Thirdly, they expressed a lack of confidence that the political system will be able to agree to more deficit reductions.

**They explicitly stated that they would restore the AAA rating if the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax-cuts for those earning above $250,000 were allowed to lapse in 2013 onwards.

**The Wall Street Journal asked Eric Cantor for a reaction and his office declined to comment.

**But Eric Cantor was available today to say he would oppose extending the unemployment benefits because "we should stop coddling the unemployed."

**Speaker Boehner reacting to the anemic jobs report for July said,"We should stop taxing." He was not heard to comment on the downgrading of US Treasuries.

**President Obama proposed today tax credits for companies to hire the more than 1 million unemployed military veterans and vowed to press Congress harder for legislation to provide more jobs. He also announced a program to retrain returning veterans for the work force and another program to ease the foreclosure crisis among military families.

**It's official President Obama has overseen more job creation in two and a half years than George W in his eight years. Since the start of 2010, the economy has added 1.9 million jobs. In this year alone, 1.1 million. (Actually,make that doubled George W's job creation record.) But why it doesn't feel so great, over 8 million jobs were lost in the Great Recession and during the last two years more than 400,000 state and local government jobs were lost and another 900,000 federal jobs.