9a49cd0346f86f380ed0321a_pa3811c.jpg Paul Lachine

The Anglo-Saxon Budget Laboratories

The recent threat of a downgrade of US public debt by the rating agency Standard and Poor’s was a bolt from the blue. Once confined to a few delinquent countries, worries about public debt are now bearing down on the world’s biggest and richest economies.

BRUSSELS – The threat last month of a downgrade of the United States’ federal debt by the rating agency Standard and Poor’s was in a way merely a confirmation of what market participants and observers already knew: US fiscal policy is unsustainable. But the symbolic significance of S&P’s assessment was huge, for it underscored an inescapable truth: worries about public debt that were once confined to a few delinquent countries are now bearing down on the world’s biggest and richest economies.

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