A commentary in China’s official Xinhua News Agency says:
The days when the debt-ridden Uncle Sam could leisurely squander unlimited overseas borrowing appeared to be numbered as its triple A-credit rating was slashed by Standard & Poor’s (S&P) for the first time on Friday.
Though the U.S. Treasury promptly challenged the unprecedented downgrade, many outside the United States believe the credit rating cut is an overdue bill that America has to pay for its own debt addition and the short-sighted political wrangling in Washington.
Dagong Global, a fledgling Chinese rating agency, degraded the U.S. treasury bonds late last year, yet its move was met then with a sense of arrogance and cynicism from some Western commentators. Now S&P has proved what its Chinese counterpart has done is nothing but telling the global investors the ugly truth.
China, the largest creditor of the world’s sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States to address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets.
To cure its addiction to debts, the United States has to reestablish the common sense principle that one should live within its means.
I would challenge the bit about social welfare costs. I understand that Social Security has been buying US Treasury bonds with its accumulated contributions for years ( and despite the Republican lies, is actually solvent). However those bonds are among those downgraded, so perhaps the piggy bank has a crack in it.
The US based investor site I follow has been advising Americans to move their assets overseas for years, and more recently advising their speculators to buy a home overseas and a passport to go with it in order to escape before a bankrupt US Treasury puts controls on moving money, and wacks the rich with a bill for all the taxes they have escaped for the past 40 years.