I wrote about this last year, well after the Department Of Justice initially filed suit against S&P in February. And as you might recall, the DOJ’s lawsuit was chockablock with staggering hypocrisy all on its own (h/t HotAir).
But if that move smelled like political retribution back then, it absolutely reeks of it now.
(via Reuters) – Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner angrily warned the chairman of Standard & Poor’s parent that the rating agency would be held accountable for its 2011 decision to strip the United States of its coveted “triple-A” rating, a new court filing shows.
Harold McGraw, the chairman of McGraw-Hill Financial Inc , made the statement in a declaration filed by S&P on Monday, as it defends against the government’s $5 billion fraud lawsuit over its rating practices prior to the 2008 financial crisis.
McGraw said he returned a call from Geithner on Aug. 8, 2011, three days after S&P cut the U.S. credit rating to “AA-plus,” and that Geithner told him “you are accountable” for an alleged “huge error” in S&P’s work.
“He said that ‘you have done an enormous disservice to yourselves and to your country,'” and that S&P’s conduct would be “looked at very carefully,” McGraw said. “Such behavior could not occur, he said, without a response from the government.”
Kinda like how a Loan Shark breaks some guy’s legs when he can’t pay his debt, ya’ know? Gotta send the “proper message”, lest anyone ELSE start to get any bright ideas, if-you-know-what-I-mean.
As I said, this has smelled fishy from Day One:
You know, a more cynical person than me would say that such threats, intimidation and bullying have been evident in the Obama Administration for some time.
Of course, I wouldn’t say such a thing. Nope, nope, nope. No-sirree-Bob, not ME, no way.
….hey, I like my legs, just the way they are…
Two Heads are Better Than One 
“Yeah…we KNOW our credit rating SHOULD be junk, but you can’t TELL the American people that!”
Look….if the U.S. Government lived under the same credit rating that we do as individuals and families in this Country, on a scale of 0 to 840, Obama would go to Credit Karma and see a NEGATIVE score. Still, IMHO, this is part of the Obama’s plan to “fundamentally transform” the United States. Drive our currency into the ground and effectively dethrone the U.S. dollar as the world’s benchmark currency. Can YOU count in Chinese “Yuan Renminbi”? Better start learning.
That THIS government, under Obama, would threaten, harass, and attempt to intimidate a rating agency for exposing the truth should come as NO surprise to anyone familiar with their tactics. We see this conduct in practically everything that they do.
Naaah, it won’t be the Yuan, and it certainly won’t be the Euro, either. The Yuan isn’t even in the Top Four reserve currencies, and the Euro has been in trouble for ages.
But you’re right in everything else, Pgh: bullying and intimidation are the Coin Of The Realm with this bunch.
Of course, it’s not as if this is REALLY egregious. I mean, it’s not as if Obama shut down traffic on a BRIDGE for 4 days, or something…
My concern rests with the fact that the Yuan just became the second most used currency in international trade finance. (He who controls that market is, for all intents and purposes, the world’s currency.) In less than 12 months it went from a sub 2% share to almost 9%, which is a growth rate of over 450%. Heck…Germany and Australia have become major players in the use of the Yuan for trade finance. Yes, the U.S. still have the lion’s share of the world finance market at over 80%, but when that continues to deteriorate……well, I guess we’ll see, won’t we?
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