Coincidence? SYDNEY (MarketWatch) â Deven Sharma will step down as president of credit-rating agency Standard & Poorâs and will be replaced by Douglas Peterson, the firmâs parent said late Monday. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/sp-president-sharma-to-step-down-2011-08-22
He caused a lot of harm to a lot of people with his unjustified decision to downgrade US while keeping other countries at maximum grade. Many people have lost a good part of their retirement savings because of him.
S&P is trying to paint a pretty face on it, and saying that the move was in the works for several months - but no doubt about it, Deven Sharma really screwed the pooch on this one. By not getting the other ratings agencies to concur, and by making a lone-wolf unilateral decision regarding US Sovereign Debt, he has really harmed the S&P brand. Making a $2 Trillion calculation mistake was poetic justice. Pioneers are the ones with the arrows in their backs. All in all, this was a fucking disaster for S&P and the board of directors really had no choice in the matter.
To say S&P caused people to lose money is somewhat suspect. SPY was over $127 per share when Clinton left office. As you know, SPY is ~ $115 today. I doubt the fact that SPY has lost ~10% of it's value since Clinton left office ~10.5 years ago is due to the S&P downgrade a few weeks ago.
It's called being ahead of the curve. In 2013, when the debt ceiling issue resurfaces, the debt will be over $17Trillion instead of the ~$14.5T now. Keep in mind that ~10% of our economy is Federal gov't budget deficit. Any tax increases or spending cuts to lower the deficit will also lower GDP. With the anemic growth rates everyone is predicting, cutting the deficit from 10% of GDp to 8% of GDP will trigger a recession instantly. S&P, which has to take into account the long term and not just the immediate moment like politicians, recognizes this. In the long run, S&P will be validated while the other ratings agencies might have their foresight questioned.
i saw this tv interview the other day from a senior VP or P of moody's that claims the US downgrade is an eventuality, in fact he even went as far as saying their calculations of the US debt was like 211 T way above the 14.3 T, but they still keeping the top ratings for the US without elaborating, question who be the one to call out that the emperor has no clothes?
Again, that me very well be the eventual outcome - but I use the 'pioneers with arrows in their backs' anecdote for a very real purpose; namely, why kill your franchise with a self-inflicted wound and let your competitors, who played it safer, reap the rewards ? You have to look at it from the Board of Director's viewpoint; that is, a stupid self-inflicted wound that damages your standing with the huge US State and Municipal Bond issuers. The fact that the US is still viewed by legitimate investors as "the cleanest shirt in the pile of dirty laundry" is very much spot-on. Dent holders get paid FIRST, by statute, with respect to the $200 Billion the US Treasury takes in each month.