http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/30/opinion/sunday/20110807_McFadden_Cartoon.html?ref=opinion

Austerity Survival Guide...

its a planned destruction of most peoples lives...seriously the US people should lynch Obama and stiff the bankers too...but we will have the usual suspects supporting Obama and his govt blind to the damage he has caused...in a just honorable society Obama would stand down at least and well I dont know how the hell the bankers could possibly pay for their part in this state of affairs

Hmmm.. some of us have heard white people calling for lynching of black men before.   Guess that is not all in the past....

@ Leo was your post supposed to be a sacarstic joke? FAIL. Much.

But if not....consider this:

So if Obama should be lynched...does that then apply to the UK PM, the Greek PM...actually to all the leaders of the Europe??????? The bankers?

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Oh wait, you couldn't find a way for the bankers to be punished for their part in the crisis... Convenient. MUCH?

And considering the financial crisis was clearly caused by more than 1 factor, so logically pointing the finger at 1 party is reckless, foolish, stupid! etc. No decent economist/observer would do that... But I imagine you are not?

http://blogs.forbes.com/investor/2011/01/31/what-caused-the-financial-crisis/

However, if you insist:

http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1877351,00.html

Oops, nope...No OBAMA on that list - is that because perhaps the crisis started in (if not before) 2008 and guess what: Obama took office in 2009... Comprendez?..BUT, George W Bush is on the list, do you support lynching him?

 Oh well, there's always someone...

"seriously the US people should lynch Obama and stiff the bankers..."

A short history of lynching of blacks in the United States of America.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/till/peopleevents/e_lynch.html

Paul Krugman on the debt crisis and Standard and Poor's lack of credibility.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/08/opinion/credibility-chutzpah-and-debt.html

"...America’s large budget deficit is, after all, primarily the result of the economic slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis. And S.& P., along with its sister rating agencies, played a major role in causing that crisis, by giving AAA ratings to mortgage-backed assets that have since turned into toxic waste.

"Nor did the bad judgment stop there. Notoriously, S.& P. gave Lehman Brothers, whose collapse triggered a global panic, an A rating right up to the month of its demise. And how did the rating agency react after this A-rated firm went bankrupt? By issuing a report denying that it had done anything wrong.

"So these people are now pronouncing on the creditworthiness of the United States of America?

"Wait, it gets better. Before downgrading U.S. debt, S.& P. sent a preliminary draft of its press release to the U.S. Treasury. Officials there quickly spotted a $2 trillion error in S.& P.’s calculations. And the error was the kind of thing any budget expert should have gotten right. After discussion, S.& P. conceded that it was wrong — and downgraded America anyway, after removing some of the economic analysis from its report...

"More broadly, the rating agencies have never given us any reason to take their judgments about national solvency seriously. It’s true that defaulting nations were generally downgraded before the event. But in such cases the rating agencies were just following the markets, which had already turned on these problem debtors.

And in those rare cases where rating agencies have downgraded countries that, like America now, still had the confidence of investors, they have consistently been wrong. Consider, in particular, the case of Japan, which S.& P. downgraded back in 2002. Well, nine years later Japan is still able to borrow freely and cheaply. As of Friday, in fact, the interest rate on Japanese 10-year bonds was just 1 percent.

So there is no reason to take Friday’s downgrade of America seriously. These are the last people whose judgment we should trust."