Fitch Ratings Agency Says U.S. Debt Fundamentals Are Fine. Our Politics Are A Mess

"It turns out that if you have a major political party arguing that a government debt default wouldn't be that big a deal, it makes people start to wonder just how creditworthy your government really is. That's the lesson of the decision late Tuesday by Fitch, one of the three major credit-rating firms, to put the U.S. government on "Ratings Watch Negative" for a possible downgrade of the nation's AAA credit rating...The irony in Fitch's statement resides in the pains it takes to point out the soundness of the fundamentals of the U.S. debt picture...[T]he United States is not facing anything resembling a traditional debt crisis, like those faced by Greece and Argentina in the recent past. This is a different sort of animal, the Fitch analysts strive to make clear -- a scenario in which it is political actors, not economic fundamentals, that are posing a risk to the creditworthiness of the world's largest economy." Neil Irwin in The Washington Post