The Market Is Standard And Its Victims Poor

Reality to Earth . . . "Well, as of this moment, they're on DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION! " - Dean Vernon Wormer, Animal House, 1978

Or, as Standard and Poor put it recently, instead of Triple A, we're making you Double A plus!

Oooh . . . Aaah . . . Let's all panic and drop over two billion in value in the stock market because someone took away half of an A. If you need any further proof the people in charge of money and policy need to have their heads examined, and us for putting a good deal of them in place, there you have it.

And just in case that doesn't do it for you, realize that a healthy chunk of the money which was pulled out of the stock market yesterday went, for the most part, into financial instruments of the very same debtor who was downgraded; the US Government.

The losers in all of this? The people who trusted the solutions coming out of Washington for the morass they've delivered us would keep the markets from panicking, and the government itself, who by listening faithfully to Standard and Poor and making it policy to only purchase securities with Triple A stamped on it made the rating an important mark, with anything less seen as a dismal failure.

The winners, as usual, was anyone who held aside enough in the way of liquid assets during the debt ceiling bacchanalia to be ready when its consequences hit the ground in financial America. The market dropped over five hundred points in a day last week and over six hundred thirty yesterday. That made stocks a bargain, and so the bargain hunters came and bought enough to move the market up a robust four hundred thirty points today.

Double secret probation made more sense than those who tend the current financial structures in this nation, and he was what would be referred to in this era as a complete tool.

That's the problem in Washington, come to think of it. All tools and no able carpenters.