Standard & Poors credit downgrade of US; your grandchildren will read about this or will they?

As I’m sure you know, on Friday afternoon Standard & Poors reduced America’s credit rating from AAA, to AA, essentially a demotion in the credit worthiness of the United States.  This will have a range of effects on all of us primarily through a rise in interest rates, lord knows credit card companies will use any excuse to jack our rates up.  The downgrade is not all that unexpected and while it certainly is a slap at how ineffective congress has been, it may also be a cover your ass move by Standard & Poors, they had Lehman’s Brothers well rated right up to the moment it failed and kicked off the financial crisis.  So they want to make sure they don’t look bad again.

Like me you are probably all pretty sick of the around the clock news coverage of this and the same old story, over and over again.  We were downgraded, what will it mean, will the stock market freak out?  Ok, we got it the first 26 times.

For me there is a bigger historical issue well at hand.  Over the last forty years we have seen more and more control of our lives and our governments by corporations.  They have infiltrated every sector of our life, their lobbyist have changed laws and distorted the truth, think nicotine is not addictive and smoking doesn’t cause cancer.  Or how about all the current natural gas commercials about how natural gas fracking is a clean,safe and effective way to help our energy needs, take a look at this before you buy that one.  http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/natural-gas-fracking-in-the-news/

The bigger issue here for me is that Standard & Poors’ has said they are downgrading the US because congress didn’t go far enough in dealing with our national debt.  They are certainly correct about that but this is a credit rating corporation telling us how to run our country, and holding it hostage by its credit rating.  Much like the Tea Party folks just did with the debt ceiling increase.  At least the Tea Party are elected American officials and not a multi-national corporation.  Why this is significant to me is that this is the first time a corporation has publicly directed the United States of America to take a specific action.  Now, the action may be in our best interest, but it is disconcerting to see the most powerful country on Earth be directed by a company.

All of this starts to make me think about the movie Rollerball, not the bullshit remake, but the one from the 70’s with James Caan and John Houseman, where the world has been taken over and run by the corporation.  The takeover has been going over for years but this is the first really overt action, maybe I’m just running with a dystopian, paranoid fantasy here, or maybe it’s prophetic.  Maybe your grandkids will read about this in textbooks, or maybe it will be carefully edited out, who knows?

Why you should care about protests in Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt

Several weeks ago there was a governmental overthrow that occurred in Tunisia and it is easy to write off Tunisia as a tiny country that has no impact on life in America, more about Tunisia at the following link:

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/16/132975274/Social-Media-Gets-Credit-For-Tunisian-Overthrow

Then there were protests in Yemen and we’ve talked about Yemen before, first a post about the recent protests:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12295864

And what we’ve discussed about Yemen previously:

http://zdeaconblue.wordpress.com/2010/12/23/the-next-big-terror-threat/

Finally, unless you’ve been in a coma for the last week you probably know that there are massive protests going on in the country of Egypt.  The protestors on the street, in what have been relatively peaceful protests so far; seem to want one thing, Hosni Mubarak out of office.  Mubarak has been the ruler of Egypt for nearly thirty years and the people of Egypt are demanding a change, you can read more about Mubarak at the following link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hosni_Mubarak

At this point a natural question arises were the neocons correct about the Middle East?  Are we seeing the results of the policy of forcing democracy on other countries?  An interesting discussion on this topic is available at the following link:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2011/01/30/matthews-were-neocons-right-about-middle-east-was-bush-better-equippe

Personally, I don’t see a stable democracy in Iraq or in Afghanistan, and there are still plenty of non-democratic governments in the Middle East including Iran and Saudi Arabia.  What seems to be occurring in the streets of the Arab world is not related to Islam and democracy but a very simple issue, basic human survival and the gap between those who have power, money and control and those who are struggling to survive.  Unemployment, poverty, and lack of education and opportunity is what the people are calling for in the streets of Tunisia, Yemen and especially Egypt.

So why should you care?  You are safe at home and watching Egypt on CNN, so really why should you care?  Ok, first this can impact our economy, in a minor way if Egypt’s economy generally melts down without too much violence.  If however things in Egypt really disintegrate and there is an interruption in travel through the Suez Canal, which is controlled by Egypt, then it could be a very big deal.  That interruption would cause oil coming out of the region to travel an additional 6,000 miles around Africa and that will impact oil prices.  You may have noticed gas prices creeping up recently and I think you can count on the creep continuing with what’s going on in Egypt.  If it really goes south there could be a significant increase in gas prices and as we have seen that impacts prices across the board in the US.

However, I’ll give you an even bigger reason to worry about what’s going on in these countries.  The issues that are being taken on in Egypt, poverty, education, unemployment, and the prosperity gap, do not only exist in these countries.  Looking at Greece, Spain, the UK and the United States this issue exists everywhere and is getting worse.  My friends, there is a limit to how long a person can suffer, can watch his/her children suffer while others have control of his/her life.  At some point people will say no more and express themselves, and then, all bets are off.  So why should you care, I’ll tell you, the country you live in, is not as different from Egypt as you might like to think.