 Hello and welcome to another edition of the Minor Issues Podcast. I'm Mark Thornton at the Mises Institute. This week I want to discuss the Fitch Credit Rating Agency's downgrade of U.S. government debt. In their report they say, quote, the ratings downgrade of the United States reflects the expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years. A high and growing general government debt burden and the erosion of governance in the United States. Period. Well, a whole host of people came out against this ridiculing Fitch saying that it wasn't necessary that it was a joke and all the typical big government people came out against this. Larry Summers, U.S. Treasury Secretary, President of Harvard University, ridiculed the move on the part of Fitch. Paul Krugman said that it was correctly ridiculed by the media and that it doesn't make any sense. Janet Yellen, Secretary of the Treasury, also said that it was ridiculous and that it was based on old data. Of course the Democrats blame the Republicans and the Republicans blamed the Democrats. The mainstream economic media basically agreed and said that it was unnecessary that this had been done by the S&P Rating Service fairly recently and nothing ever came of it. So is this a joke? Is this ridiculous? Is this terrible? Or is this the right thing to do? Is this a good thing? Question mark. Well, in today's podcast, I want to represent the other point of view to the mainstream political class and media approach to the downgrade of U.S. government debt. And first and foremost, I want to mention something that I had missed in the previous downgrade and in the debt ceiling negotiations that occurred recently. Instead of raising the debt ceiling as they have done dozens and dozens of times in the past, your government took an even worse step by simply suspending the debt limit. In other words, there is no debt limit right now. They can spend as much as they want. And we are without any constraint whatsoever on our government in terms of its spending and borrowing policies. So it's not surprising that the deficit this year is up to $1.4 trillion, a 170% increase. And there's more to come. Fitch and others see only a one-way trajectory of more and more deficits over the next 10 years. Fitch only claims three years. And this debt is going to be coming at us across the yield curve from short-term government bills in incredibly large numbers, up to 30-year government bond borrowing. So there's lots of supply out there. It's very sobering. The interest expense on the national debt is up 25% just in the first nine months of this year. We're paying $652 billion just in interest. So with no constraint on government spending, it isn't surprising that we would get this downgrade. The federal government is spending money handover fist for anything possible with absolutely no cuts and now no constraint on government spending and borrowing whatsoever. The Fed has been increasing interest rates, which is a monetary signal to the fiscal side, the spending and borrowing side to stop, to curb your activities. But that hasn't worked. Recently, the price of gold also sent a signal to Congress rising above $2,000. But of course, that was barely noticed by anybody. And when you look at the opinions of people about the Fitch downgrade, you see the good guys cheering on the downgrade, or the bad guys, the Keynesians, the big spenders, government politicians and so forth, ridiculing this measure. And it makes us wonder why without any constraint on government spending and government borrowing, what is going to happen between now and after the election?