In case any of our readers missed it, a guy at Fallutin National Bank estimates that the cost of maintaining the Federal debt would jump by as much as 70 basis points were the credit rating on Treasuries to drop a notch to AA from AAA. That's around $100 billion a year on the $14.3 trillion ceiling they're all trying to raise. Though the interest rate hike would only effect new offerings and the cost of maturing obligations upon rollover, investors would take an immediate hit in market price.
Once the full impact settled in, this ratings cut would reduce the $2 trillion budget savings one of the two dunderheads expects to get over the next decade by substantially more than $1 trillion every decade, adjusted for compounding, decade in and decade out.
Most disgusted observers, including ours here at The Post, feel that the rating change would reflect a dramatic deterioration in the quality of governance, not the numbers, and expect it to happen whether the ceiling gets bumped up or not. Most of that disgust reflects the stupidity of aligned voters hell bent on returning these morons to office no matter now ridiculous this thing gets.
