Artful Dodger:

The decision by Standard & Poor's to push America into the second division, when it comes to trustworthiness about paying its bills, puts the USA below the UK, Germany, France, Singapore, Finland and 14 other countries.

The reason it gives is what all America has been saying: Washington doesn't work. The S&P report says: "The political brinkmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America's governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed."

They say they think dealing with the debt remains a "contentious and fitful process". They say no-one is serious about dealing with the programmes that eat up money, like Medicare, health care for the elderly.

They single out Republicans for ruling out tax rises. "It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options... Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues."

My colleague Robert Peston has an excellent blog on the economics of this, but what about the politics?

President Obama will doubtless use the occasion to scold Congress again and urge politicians to come together not as Republicans or Democrats but as Americans. Some may be chastened enough to do that for a while.

But is fair to put all the burden on the legislators, as though failure to agree a consensus is a moral lapse? The president is fond of saying that Americans vote for divided government not dysfunctional government.

Yet the system, a much-loved relic of a different age, constructed for reasons little to do with the 21st Century, is almost designed to bring about dysfunctional government. The combination of a strict separation of legislature and executive, plus two-yearly congressional elections, all but encourages having different parties in control of different bits of government.

......... well lets blame everyone in Washington (or is linked to) then. Obama, Congress, the Senate, Lobbyists, Democrats and Republicans.

... The Tea Party, Murdoch via Fox and any other group that is only thinking about a few extra dollars in their wallet and not their country. Or puts politics or ideologies above that of the needs of the USA.

.. 31 years ago a process started that reduced the taxes from the rich by 35% to 35% from 70%, effectively reducing tax income from 70% of Americans by 50%. It seems America worked before hand.....