The IMF (International Monetary Fund) is an organization worked on by about ninety percent of the world's nations, and has the goal of keeping the global economy balanced and growing. They've been doing this since around the end of World War 2, so about sixty years experience under their belt. The China Daily notes that America and some European nations have been called out by the IMF for dancing on some pretty precarious ledges (specifically, the Debt Ceiling votes). The issue at stake: Credit Ratings.
You've probably heard that most governments have an "AAA" rating, and that America is at risk of "being downgraded", but not what that means in hard numbers. Whenever someone issues Bonds as a way of making money, they're given a credit rating and little review blurb by three different credit rating bureaus. The rating and review is used by Bond Buyers (usually banks) to decide how much of an interest rate they're going to add as a condition of the purchase.
An AAA rating means you're considered to have a 100% chance to repay them when required. An AA rating means the money might not be there when they want it back, or might not be enough but that it's really unlikely to happen. The Bond Buyers mitigate that minor risk by upping the interest rate a tiny bit. The problem with that is the "tiny increase" will be applied to billions of dollars in bonds.
According to this Yahoo Finance chart, the interest rate difference between AAA and AA can be anywhere from 0.15% to 0.93%. For every billion dollars of federal revenue we bring in via Treasury Bonds, that's an additional cost of 1.5 to 9.3 million dollars just because banks are scared we might not pass a Debt Ceiling vote. If America had never had more than an AA rating in the past two decades, that would have given us an additional 6 to 37 billion dollars in debt on the roughly 4+ trillion dollars in Treasury Bonds currently in circulation from that timeframe.
We're having a hard time paying our national bills now, and it will get harder if we don't tighten the belt and prevent payments from being missed. Cuts need to come, or taxes need to go up, and your Congressman needs to know where people are comfortable with them being made. Use the trolling tactics in the eBook to out people on what they think they can pay more for, or what they're willing to go without.
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