borrow money and there are financial contracts, they are required to have a triple a credit market. and there s a discussion also about whether the u.s. deserves a triple a credit rating if we tiptoe over that line and have an unintentional breach of not paying our bills because the bipartisan problem in washington is a feature, no longer a bug, so is that really are we worthy of a triple a credit rating overall? that s terrifying and horrible. yes. also new data out this morning, giving another picture of where the economy stands, let s set aside what s going on with the debt crisis. it s remarkable, the backdrop of the u.s. economy is still strong. you look at weekly jobless claims, 229,000. last week was revised lower. these are lower than
available. in the meantime the treasury has not said how it will pay bill or issue ious. before any of that happens, the u.s. got slapped with a new warning. overnight one of the top credit rating agencies, fitch, put the u.s. on a rating watch negative. making clear this man-made political crisis has put the country on the verge of losing the triple a credit rating. the last major debt debacle in 2011 led to the unprecedented first ever downgrade to the united states from s&p. christine romans is here on this. this is something you and i talk about all the time. a watch negative, what does it mean? it means if they don t do it exactly right. the u.s. is going to lose the triple a credit rating and that will make it more expensive to
good. this is typically the view and one of the things the markets know cuss on more closely. if you don t make good on an interest payment to a bond holder or treasury note holder, there s trillions of those around the world. and that would compromise that value and that pristine unchecked record in the american history here, even with down gradings and the like and when we lost our triple a credit rating in 2011, the fact of the matter is, we always paid our interest payments. others say if you are late on that, if you are late on a social security payment or late paying a soldier or federal workers, some extent it to that. the fact of the matter is, time is tight. they ve got to try to get something together and soon. the question is can they. back to chad pergram following this. chad? what i heard in this is at least this is what kevin mccarthy talked about. he was pleased with the frame work of what would be doing the
enough? like do we really have to do this? i mean, chair powell said it best when he said there s no he s not going to get involved in the negotiation. they have to raise the debt ceiling. we can t default on treasuries. that s the safest asset in the world. that would be a mess. neil: i can remember, austan, in 2011 when you were with barack obama. we had our debt down graded. we avoided a default. it was the craziness prior that prompted that, you know, slashing our triple a credit rating. some are saying the same thing could be poised to happen now. what do you think? well, i don t know if it was the crisis or if it was the fact that i left the government. two hours after i left the government is when we got down graded. as you look now, this to not be flip about it, this is a
they got real close, 2011 it was a disaster i remember the government shutting down. you lose your triple-a credit rating and the rest of the world says wait, if they re not going to pay their bills, honor their commitments on the world stage we don t want to buy their debt and suddenly you unravel everything. it s just bad and dangerous. there are smart people who say we shouldn t have a debt limit. if congress does it over and over again, spends the money and says we re not going to pay for the money why have a limit in the first place? why go down to the wire every time. it s just political gamesmanship. yes. it must poll well to be able to pound on the table and say we re going to get our fiscal house in order. there are democrats that would like to get the fiscal house in order, too. but this is one of those things that congress does, it s groundhog day and dangerous. thank you, lauren, in the dark. we see you.