China bluntly criticized the US on Saturday one day after the superpower's credit rating was downgraded, saying the "good old days" of borrowing were over. Standard & Poor's cut the U.S. long-term credit rating from top-tier AAA by a notch to AA-plus on Friday over concerns about the nation's budget deficits and climbing debt burden. "The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone," China's official Xinhua news agency said in a commentary.
Those messes aren't the U.S. Government's messes. The mess in the U.S. government is just part of Generation Greed's messes. And they didn’t happen this week. They happened over 30 years.
I'll say it again: the U.S. standard of living is going down 10 to 20 percent. Politics are getting nasty because part of the decision will be made by the government, and the powerful are seeking to exempt themselves from a share of the pain — increasing that share for others. The wealthy. The seniors. Etc. So much for "shared sacrifice."
Along with shifting the consequences, the powerful are seeking to shift the blame. I suggest you re-read this post to see what I think of that. This problem is bigger than politicls, bigger than government. It is our culture. The culture of Generation Greed.