United States federal government credit-rating downgrades

Fitch just reiterated America's AA plus credit.

Remember, it lost its AAA status.

It's still extremely high quality.

However, the credit rating agency warned the country is, quote, vulnerable to economic shocks due to its high fiscal deficits, end quote.

There are a lot of concerns of what's going on with fixed income and with bonds.

And as many of you know, we were downgraded from a AAA to a AA.

I believe it was right after the election.

So it was like in 2024, I'm pretty sure.

The deal, the Budget Control Act, it's always a good name, right? was signed on August 2, 2011, the actual day the Treasury said it would run out of room.

Three days later, on Friday, August 5, after the close, the S&P downgraded the United States from AAA to AA+, for the first time ever.

And the story behind the downgrade is kind of amazing.

Before it was announced, the Treasury found a roughly $2 trillion math error in the S&P's numbers.

And as long as the American people are willing to have full faith and trust in the credit of the U.S. government that their paper is actually going to be worth something or that Social Security will be there when they retire, then the system can kind of go on as the shell game that it is.

But the minute that the people start to lose faith and confidence, and we've started to see this, too, with the AAA credit rating of the United States being downgraded, the minute people start to lose faith in their own government, their own currency, that's when this whole house of cards will collapse.

Just give me 30 seconds if you can answer this in 30 seconds.

Do you think it's possible, probably not in the present election cycle, but before there isn't any kind of default, which I guess is what you're referring to here, do you think that it's possible to have a mature conversation with your fellow Americans and do something like raise the retirement age? Do you have confidence that that's possible? Well...