Your analysis does not stand up to scrutiny. The facts could just as easily be explained away as deliberate sabotage by the GOP, by one of their agents in S&P, designed to draw attention away from growing public outrage at Tea Party intransigence in the Debt Debacle.

Standard and Poor did not distinguish itself by its failure to predict the poor credit of American finance during the stock market/real estate crash. Other countries, such as France, have AAA ratings even though they are financially less secure risks than the USA. And the other credit rating agencies have not backed up S&P's position.

If the White House is to be believed (and I certainly don't, they have every reason to blow smoke) S&P's calculations were all wrong when they first made this announcement, and when it was pointed out to them, they quickly changed their justifications to a less quantifiable political assessment instead of a mathematical analysis.

Most important, the US has been blundering into deep deficit territory for decades now, particularly in the first decade of the new millennium and especially so since the '08 crash. It seems mighty suspicious to me that S&P would wait for this moment in time to make their momentous announcement, on a Friday afternoon right after the budget negotiations and the resulting Wall Street reaction.

Regardless of how you may feel about Obama or his enemies, this smells of dirty politics to me. The timing is just too convenient.