More GORE–Great Obama Recession Economy–Government Treasury Securites Downgraded From AAA to AA+ With A Negative Outlook By Standard & Poor’s Rating Agency–Too Little Too Late–The Austrian School of Economics Was Right!–Videos

Posted on August 6, 2011. Filed under: Blogroll, Communications, Life, Links, People, Philosophy, Politics, Private Sector, Public Sector, Rants, Raves, Security, Strategy, Talk Radio, Taxes, Unemployment, Unions, Video, War, Wealth, Wisdom | Tags: Austrian School of Economics, Credit Rating Downgraded, Entitlement Spending, Federal Agencis, Federal Departments, Gore, Great Obama Recession Economy, Medicaid, medicare, National Defense, Peter Schiff, social security, Standard & Poor's, Treasury Securities, Welfare |

Research Update:
United States of America Long-Term Rating
Lowered To ‘AA+’ On Political Risks And
Rising Debt Burden; Outlook Negative

Overview

· We have lowered our long-term sovereign credit rating on the United
States of America to ‘AA+’ from ‘AAA’ and affirmed the ‘A-1+’ short-term
rating.
· We have also removed both the short- and long-term ratings from
CreditWatch negative.
· The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan
that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of
what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government’s
medium-term debt dynamics.
· More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness,
stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political
institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic
challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a
negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.
· Since then, we have changed our view of the difficulties in bridging the
gulf between the political parties over fiscal policy, which makes us
pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be
able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal
consolidation plan that stabilizes the government’s debt dynamics any
time soon.
· The outlook on the long-term rating is negative. We could lower the
long-term rating to ‘AA’ within the next two years if we see that less
reduction in spending than agreed to, higher interest rates, or new
fiscal pressures during the period result in a higher general government
debt trajectory than we currently assume in our base case. 

http://www.standardandpoors.com/servlet/BlobServer?blobheadername3=MDT-Type&blobcol=urldata&blobtable=MungoBlobs&blobheadervalue2=inline%3B+filename%3DUS_Downgraded_AA%2B.pdf&blobheadername2=Content-Disposition&blobheadervalue1=application%2Fpdf&blobkey=id&blobheadername1=content-type&blobwhere=1243942957443&blobheadervalue3=UTF-8

President Obama’s Statement on Credit Downgrade  

Peter Schiff: Welcome to the Twilight Zone

Obama Has Dictatorial Power To Confiscate Europe’s Gold

S&P: Why we downgraded the U.S.

 Ron Paul On Neil Cavuto: Talks about The AAA Rating Downgrade To AA+

S&P Downgrades US Credit Rating From AAA

S&P Downgrades US Credit Rating (First Time IN HISTORY)

Deficits, Debts and Unfunded Liabilities: The Consequences of Excessive Government Spending

The Austrians Were Right

Peter Schiff on Charles Adler (8/5/11)

“The market going down has nothing to do with S&P downgrade” Jim Rogers

The Fed’s ‘Fictitious’ Debt – Can the US Treasury just stiff the fed?

Peter Schiff On Freedom Watch- 1 8 2011 – The US will default through inflation

Peter Schiff – ‘Recession is coming back’

Peter Schiff: More Money is about to be Dropped from Helicopters

AAA-rmageddon: S&P downgrade knocks off US credit crown

S&P downgrades US debt outlook-On the Edge with Max Keiser-04-29-2011-(Part1)  

S&P downgrades US debt outlook-On the Edge with Max Keiser-04-29-2011-(Part2)

Interview on Credit Rating Agencies

The essence of the problem is simply massive Federal Government spending  and not too little tax revenues.

President Obama’s is one of the primary causes of the problem with his ridiculous budget proposal that was voted down in the Senate by 97 Senators voting No!

President  Obama’s call for a  ” balanced approach” to the budget or massive tax increases in 2013 and beyond as the economy enters another recession is a firm indication that he is an economic illiterate, out of touch with economic reality and deserves to be fired next November for incompetence and the damage his economic policies to the American people.

Instead of running deficits over the next ten years of $7,000 to $8,000 billion and increasing the national debt by another $7,000 to $8,000 billion, the size of the Federal Governments needs to cut by about 30% to 50% and the national debt reduced over the several decades.

This would require actually cutting entitlement programs ( Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and welfare), national defense spending, and all other spending by permanently closing between eight to ten Federal Departments, many agencies, and hundreds of government programs.

Also the Federal income tax system needs to be replaced by the FairTax to encourage economic growth by increasing savings and investment which would in turn reduce unemployment and the Federal deficit.

The FairTax: It’s Time

Lugar Cosponsors the FairTax

Neither the Democratic or Republican political establishments have the vision, will or courage to do this.

While the majority of the  American people are prepared for and calling for a huge downsizing of the Federal Government, the political ruling class is opposed to any significant reduction in the size and scope of the Federal Government.

For both political parties most of their campaign contributions come from those companies and individuals who directly benefit from an ever larger and expanding Federal Government and a National Debt.

This includes bankers and financial institutions, the military industrial complex, lawyers, lobbyists, unions, just to name a few of the big campaign contributors.

S&P downgrades US credit rating from AAA

“…The United States has lost its sterling credit rating from Standard & Poor’s.

The credit rating agency on Friday lowered the nation’s AAA rating for the first time since granting it in 1917. The move came less than a week after a gridlocked Congress finally agreed to spending cuts that would reduce the debt by more than $2 trillion — a tumultuous process that contributed to convulsions in financial markets. The promised cuts were not enough to satisfy S&P.

The drop in the rating by one notch to AA-plus was telegraphed as a possibility back in April. The three main credit agencies, which also include Moody’s Investor Service and Fitch, had warned during the budget fight that if Congress did not cut spending far enough, the country faced a downgrade. Moody’s said it was keeping its AAA rating on the nation’s debt, but that it might still lower it.

One of the biggest questions after the downgrade was what impact it would have on already nervous investors. While the downgrade was not a surprise, some selling is expected when stock trading resumes Monday morning. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 699 points this week, the biggest weekly point drop since October 2008. …”

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/SampP-downgrades-US-credit-apf-2107320979.html

Background Articles and Videos

Treasury Bond Prices and Yields

The Gold Standard Before the Civil War | Murray N. Rothbard

The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar (Part 1 of 2) by Murray N. Rothbard

The Case for a 100 Percent Gold Dollar (Part 2 of 2) by Murray N. Rothbard

Open Market Operations

http://www.moneycafe.com/library/fedfundsrate.htm

United States Treasury security  

“…A United States Treasury security is government debt issued by the United States Department of the Treasury through the Bureau of the Public Debt. Treasury securities are the debt financing instruments of the United States Federal government, and they are often referred to simply as Treasuries. There are four types of marketable treasury securities: Treasury bills, Treasury notes, Treasury bonds, and Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS). There are several types of non-marketable treasury securities including State and Local Government Series (SLGS), Government Account Series debt issued to government-managed trust funds, and savings bonds. All of the marketable Treasury securities are very liquid and are heavily traded on the secondary market. The non-marketable securities (such as savings bonds) are issued to subscribers and cannot be transferred through market sales.

History

The U.S. government knew that the costs of World War I would be great, and the question of how to pay for the war was a matter of intense debate. The resulting decision was to pay for the war with a balance between higher taxes (see the War Tax Act) and government debt. Traditionally, the government borrowed from other countries, but there were no other countries from which to borrow in 1917: U.S. citizens would have to fully finance the war through both higher taxes and purchases of war bonds.^[1]

The Treasury raised funding throughout the war by selling $21.5 billion in ‘Liberty bonds.’ These bonds were sold at subscription where officials created coupon price and then sold it at Par value. At this price, subscriptions could be filled in as little as one day, but usually remained open for several weeks, depending on demand for the bond.^[1]

After the war, the Liberty Bonds were reaching maturity, but the Treasury was unable to pay each down fully with only limited budget surpluses. The resolution to this problem was to refinance the debt with variable short and medium-term maturities. Again the Treasury issued debt through fixed-price subscription, where both the coupon and the price of the debt were dictated by the treasury.^[1]

The problems with debt issuance became apparent in the late-1920’s. The system suffered from chronic oversubscription, where interest rates were so attractive that there were more purchasers of debt than supplied by the government. This indicated that the government was paying too much for debt. As government debt was undervalued, debt purchasers could buy from the government and immediately sell to another market participant at a higher price.^[1]

In 1929, the U.S. Treasury shifted from the fixed-price subscription system to a system of auctioning where ‘Treasury Bills’ would be sold to the highest bidder. Securities were then issued on a pro rata system where securities would be allocated to the highest bidder until their demand was full. If more treasuries were supplied by the government, they would then be allocated to the next highest bidder. This system allowed the market to set the price rather than the government. On December 10, 1929, the Treasury issued its first auction. The result was the issuing of $224 million three-month bills. The highest bid was at 99.310 with the lowest bid accepted at 99.152.^[1]

Foreign countries later started to buy U.S. debt as an investment of their surplus U.S. Dollars. There is fear that foreign countries hold so many bonds that if they stopped buying them, the U.S. economy would collapse; however, the reality is that more bonds are transferred in a single day by the Treasury than are held by any single sovereign state.^[2] The perception of this dependence furthers belief that the U.S. and China economies are so tightly linked that both fear the consequences of a potential slow down in China’s purchase of those bonds. In her 2010 visit to China, the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on authorities in Beijing to continue buying U.S. Treasuries, saying it would help jumpstart the flagging U.S. economy and stimulate imports of Chinese goods.^[3]

As the economic recession continues, more doubts arise over the real value of U.S. treasury securities. Though carefully worded, Chinese premier Wen Jia Bao’s warning about possible devaluation of Chinese held U.S. bonds was taken very seriously by Washington:

“Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I’m a little bit worried” … “I would like to call on the United States to honor its words, stay a credible nation and ensure the safety of Chinese assets.”^[4] – Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, said at a news conference after the closing of China’s 2009 legislative session.

However, it is important to note that such comments, while critical, were very likely indicative of Chinese “gesturing” ahead of the April 1st G-20 Economic Summit. As of April 2009, the U.S. dollar had rallied YTD against all other major world currencies. On March 18, 2009, the Federal Reserve used quantitative easing “to help improve conditions in private credit markets, the Committee decided to purchase up to $300 billion of longer-term Treasury securities over the next six months.”^[5]

Marketable securities

 Directly issued by the United States Government

 Treasury bill

“Treasury bill” redirects here. Note that the Bank of England issues these in the United Kingdom.

Treasury bills (or T-Bills) mature in one year or less. Like zero-coupon bonds, they do not pay interest prior to maturity; instead they are sold at a discount of the par value to create a positive yield to maturity.^[6] Many regard Treasury bills as the least risky investment available to U.S. investors.

Regular weekly T-Bills are commonly issued with maturity dates of 28 days (or 4 weeks, about a month), 91 days (or 13 weeks, about 3 months), 182 days (or 26 weeks, about 6 months), and 364 days (or 52 weeks, about 1 year). Treasury bills are sold by single-price auctions held weekly. Offering amounts for 13-week and 26-week bills are announced each Thursday for auction, usually at 11:30 a.m., on the following Monday and settlement, or issuance, on Thursday. Offering amounts for 4-week bills are announced on Monday for auction the next day, Tuesday, usually at 11:30 a.m., and issuance on Thursday. Offering amounts for 52-week bills are announced every fourth Thursday for auction the next Tuesday, usually at 11:30 am, and issuance on Thursday. Purchase orders at TreasuryDirect must be entered before 11:00 on the Monday of the auction. The minimum purchase, effective April 7, 2008, is $100. (This amount formerly had been $1,000.) Mature T-bills are also redeemed on each Thursday. Banks and financial institutions, especially primary dealers, are the largest purchasers of T-bills.

Like other securities, individual issues of T-bills are identified with a unique CUSIP number. The 13-week bill issued three months after a 26-week bill is considered a re-opening of the 26-week bill and is given the same CUSIP number. The 4-week bill issued two months after that and maturing on the same day is also considered a re-opening of the 26-week bill and shares the same CUSIP number. For example, the 26-week bill issued on March 22, 2007, and maturing on September 20, 2007, has the same CUSIP number (912795A27) as the 13-week bill issued on June 21, 2007, and maturing on September 20, 2007, and as the 4-week bill issued on August 23, 2007 that matures on September 20, 2007.

During periods when Treasury cash balances are particularly low, the Treasury may sell cash management bills (or CMBs). These are sold at a discount and by auction just like weekly Treasury bills. They differ in that they are irregular in amount, term (often less than 21 days), and day of the week for auction, issuance, and maturity. When CMBs mature on the same day as a regular weekly bill, usually Thursday, they are said to be on-cycle. The CMB is considered another reopening of the bill and has the same CUSIP. When CMBs mature on any other day, they are off-cycle and have a different CUSIP number.

Treasury bills are quoted for purchase and sale in the secondary market on an annualized discount percentage, or basis.

With the advent of TreasuryDirect, individuals can now purchase T-Bills online and have funds withdrawn from and deposited directly to their personal bank account and earn higher interest rates on their savings.

General calculation for the discount yield for Treasury bills is

 Treasury note

This is the modern usage of “Treasury Note” in the U.S., for the earlier meanings see Treasury Note (disambiguation).

Treasury notes (or T-Notes) mature in one to ten years. They have a coupon payment every six months, and are commonly issued with maturities dates between 1 to 10 years, with denominations of $1,000. In the basic transaction, one buys a “$1,000” T-Note for say, $950, collects interest over 10 years of say, 3% per year, which comes to $30 yearly, and at the end of the 10 years cashes it in for $1000. So, $950 over the course of 10 years becomes $1300.

T-Notes and T-Bonds are quoted on the secondary market at percentage of par in thirty-seconds of a point (n/32 of a point, where n = 1,2,3,…). Thus, for example, a quote of 95:07 on a note indicates that it is trading at a discount: $952.19 (i.e., 95 + 7/32%) for a $1,000 bond. (Several different notations may be used for bond price quotes. The example of 95 and 7/32 points may be written as 95:07, or 95-07, or 95’07, or decimalized as 95.21875.) Other notation includes a +, which indicates 1/64 points and a third digit may be specified to represent 1/256 points. Examples include 95:07+ which equates to (95 + 7/32 + 1/64) and 95:073 which equates to (95 + 7/32 + 3/256). Notation such as 95:073+ is unusual and not typically used.

The 10-year Treasury note has become the security most frequently quoted when discussing the performance of the U.S. government bond market and is used to convey the market’s take on longer-term macroeconomic expectations.

Treasury bond

Treasury bonds (T-Bonds, or the long bond) have the longest maturity, from twenty years to thirty years. They have a coupon payment every six months like T-Notes, and are commonly issued with maturity of thirty years. The secondary market is highly liquid, so the yield on the most recent T-Bond offering was commonly used as a proxy for long-term interest rates in general.^{[citation needed]} This role has largely been taken over by the 10-year note, as the size and frequency of long-term bond issues declined significantly in the 1990s and early 2000s.^{[citation needed]}

The U.S. Federal government suspended issuing the well-known 30-year Treasury bonds (often called long-bonds) for a four and a half year period starting October 31, 2001 and concluding February 2006.^[7] As the U.S. government used its budget surpluses to pay down the Federal debt in the late 1990s,^[8] the 10-year Treasury note began to replace the 30-year Treasury bond as the general, most-followed metric of the U.S. bond market. However, because of demand from pension funds and large, long-term institutional investors, along with a need to diversify the Treasury’s liabilities – and also because the flatter yield curve meant that the opportunity cost of selling long-dated debt had dropped – the 30-year Treasury bond was re-introduced in February 2006 and is now issued quarterly.^[9] This brought the U.S. in line with Japan and European governments issuing longer-dated maturities amid growing global demand from pension funds.^{[citation needed]}

 TIPS

Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (or TIPS) are the inflation-indexed bonds issued by the U.S. Treasury. The principal is adjusted to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), the commonly used measure of inflation. When the CPI rises, your principal adjusts upward. If the index falls, your principal adjusts downwards.^[10] The coupon rate is constant, but generates a different amount of interest when multiplied by the inflation-adjusted principal, thus protecting the holder against inflation. TIPS are currently offered in 5-year, 10-year and 30-year maturities.^[11]

Federal Reserve holdings of U.S. Treasuries

For the Quantitative easing policy the Feds holding of US treasuries increased from $750 billion in 2007 to over $1.5 trillion by June 2011. Source Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. ^{[12]   …”}

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Treasury_security

Understanding the Financial Crisis – very well explanation!

Deconstructing the Subprime Crisis

Jeremy Siegel on the Resilience of American Finance

Franklin Allen on Lessons from the Subprime Crisis

Understanding The Debt Crisis In The U.S.

CNN: Understanding the Crisis

Understanding the Financial Crisis

Stein Says Economy to Accelerate; U.S. Downgrade Likely

Related Posts On Pronk Palisades

Weak Obama Recovery Ends–Great Obama Recession Economy Or GORE Starts–Labor Participation Rate in July 2011 Hits 27 Year Low of 63.9%–Over 130,000 Workers Leave Workforce In July 2011–No Jobs!–Videos