[jerf]

It will be interesting to see how the markets react to this.

My personal theory, which I haven't seen anyone else state, is that the reason we heard from the bond raters last week about how the US might lose its AAA status is an oblique threat to so downgrade our rating if this bill passes. Even if we merely apply the conservative "three times more than the government says it will cost" we're stacking on another staggering amount of debt and entitlement on an economy that can't take it. (Given our current entitlement loadout even if our economy were to start rebounding tomorrow at record pace we're still in deep trouble in the not-so-distant future... and that's before we handed out yet more entitlements.) I'm not ready to "predict" it, but I wouldn't be surprised we lose it in the near future, as in, single-digit weeks.

They'll be right, too. An entity deep in debt whose only priority is to pile it on even deeper is an entity that is not going to be cleaning up its finances anytime soon. We'll have earned it.

[dennisgorelik]

I wish they (President and Congress) closed Iraq's financial black hole first and only then entered new spending spree. That's what Obama promised during his presidential campaign. Sigh.

[david927]

He found out that it's not a "financial black hole" in any sense of the word. The opposite, it's an OPEC-killer:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/03/17/how_iraqi_o...

[ewjordan]

"It will be interesting to see how the markets react to this."

The markets reacted to this long ago, which is why we're not seeing much of a reaction to it now (the market is now up by about the amount it was down when the parent posted that link) - nobody had any real doubt as to whether this would ultimately pass or not, the only question was exactly what provisions would be taken out or put in to ensure that it did.

No comment on our debt problems, however - I'd tend to agree that eventually someone needs to pay the piper, though I think single-digit weeks might be underestimating it.