Freedom Line Blog

Ruth Marcus focuses on the silver lining surrounding Standard & Poor’s downgrading the United States’ credit rating:

The more shake-’em-up warnings that could prod the political system into action, the better. From the Obama administration’s point of view, you don’t want the financial markets overreacting to the news and therefore making economic matters worse – hence Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner’s round of interviews saying that S&P was overly gloomy about the prospects for political agreement. At the same time, as long as the markets remain reasonably calm, as appears to be the case, the administration is happy to have the political classes riled up. Problem is, the administration has different messages for the two audiences but only a single microphone. (Emphasis added)

In this case, the Obama Administration isn’t suffering from a lack of transparency – it’s deleterious contradictions are all-too-easy to see as it walks America’s financial future right off a cliff.