user: Q: Tea Party downgrade? Here’s what S&P actually said

Was it a Tea Party downgrade?

Beltway media has offered the usual pox-on-both-political houses analysis of Standard & Poor’s downgrade of U.S. debt and this week’s market meltdown. The two parties spent Monday blaming one other side for the debacle. According to this narrative, both sides must bear equal guilt.

But what does S&P actually say in its downgrade report?

Politics: The downgrade analysis is very political. S&P issued the downgrade even though we avoided default — and even after the Treasury pointed out S&P’s $2 trillion math error. S&P went ahead with the downgrade due to its concerns about political dysfunction in Washington, which has created “greater policy uncertainty.”

Which political party does S&P fault? Let’s go to the memo (emphasis added):

The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.

Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.

So, brinksmanship and refusal to discuss new revenue are critical reasons for the downgrade. Does that sound to you like bipartisan blame?

Granted, S&P also talks about the extraordinary difficulty of bridging political differences between the two parties, shortcomings of the debt ceiling deal and its concerns about Medicare spending. Yet Democrats are only mentioned specifically once:

Republicans and Democrats have only been able to agree to relatively modest savings on discretionary spending while delegating to the Select Committee decisions on more comprehensive measures.

But here’s S&P’s essential point:

In our view, the difficulty in framing a consensus on fiscal policy weakens the government’s ability to manage public finances and diverts attention from the debate over how to achieve more balanced and dynamic economic growth in an era of fiscal stringency and private-sector deleveraging…

One last point: Social Security is mentioned nowhere in this memo — unless you count two general references to “entitlements.” Perhaps S&P understands that Social Security isn’t a contributor to the deficit. Heads up, super committee.

A: Beltway media has offered the usual pox-on-both-political houses analysis of Standard & Poor's downgrade of U.S. debt and this week's market meltdown, but what does S&P actually say in its downgrade report?


Q:
Roof Changing Tenor â and Outcomes â at Wimbledon
The lights of Centre Court shining through the closed roof. The use of the retractable roof has created controversy at Wimbledon.

Wimbledon, a grassy place where tradition is a brand, has changed dramatically.

At a tournament where more formal attire was once the rule, some fans were walking around the grounds this week in bare feet and cutoff shorts. One of the young uniformed stewards directing spectators to their seats has huge tattoos on both arms.

But the biggest change is on a grander scale. It is the retractable roof that covers Centre Court and has become an increasingly significant factor since it was used sparingly in the first two years of its existence in 2009 and 2010.

Built, after great debate and at great expense, to combat the infamous London weather and guarantee entertainment to worldwide television audiences, the roof has fulfilled that purpose in style and also has provided a welcome measure of security late in the second week that semifinals and finals will be played on time.

But Wimbledon still has a roof issue, and it has little to do with rain.

“Look, this is an outdoor tournament, so I think everybody wants to play when the roof is open,” said Novak Djokovic, the defending champion and No. 1 seed.

It was closed from start to finish as a precautionary measure on Friday, which was strange indeed considering that the other 18 match courts at Wimbledon were in full service outdoors. As Djokovic worked to beat Radek Stepanek in four sets indoors, some of their fellow pros sat on the deck of the players restaurant and lunched in their sunglasses.

“I was a little surprised when I saw sunshine that the roof is closed,” Djokovic said. “But obviously they’re relying on the forecast that I don’t think is very reliable here.”

When a match starts with the roof closed on Centre Court, tournament rules and tour-wide practice dictate that it finish with the roof closed. But the tournament referee Andrew Jarrett did have the option to open it before each of the final two scheduled matches Friday. With rain still a possibility, he declined to do so.

Opening the roof at Wimbledon requires a short delay; closing it and establishing appropriate conditions for play requires an even longer break of up to 45 minutes. To open it when there is a reasonable chance of having to close it again is thus a risk for a tournament where television networks crave continuous play.

And so they played on under cover Friday, with Agnieszka Radwanska routing Heather Watson and Roger Federer rallying from a two-set deficit against Julien Benneteau, who had already beaten Federer indoors on a hard court in Paris in 2009.

“It does play different indoors,” Federer said of the grass. “ Indoor grass is not something we are used to.”

Rain or no rain, Federer and the other stars regularly scheduled on Centre Court will soon get used to it unless Wimbledon changes its policies. The roof has become a major player: never more than on Thursday night when Lukas Rosol was able to finish off one of the bigger upsets in recent tennis history over Rafael Nadal.

Without the roof, the match would almost certainly have been stopped for darkness in the fifth set.

“They would have been coming back today to finish,” said Philip Brook, chairman of the All England Club, still shaking his head on Friday at the 100th-ranked Rosol’s five-set victory.

The history of Wimbledon, with all its rain-delayed matches past, might have been very different with a roof: Tim Henman, Britain’s great hope for nearly a decade, might actually have reached the final instead of losing in a three-day semifinal. Goran Ivanisevic would never have faced Patrick Rafter in a raucous Monday final in 2001.

But Thursday, with light starting to fade and Nadal having won the fourth set, Jarrett elected to close the roof and play the entire fifth set indoors under the lights. The Centre Court crowd roared its collective approval at the announcement, delighted to see a conclusion. But Nadal looked much less delighted: surprised that the process of closing the roof was going to take at least 30 minutes and too well aware that momentum is a precious thing in tennis.

“My feeling was, is completely new stadium with new roof, so the normal thing is cover the roof in 5, 10 minutes,” Nadal said. “That was my thought.”
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assistant: The retractable roof at Wimbledon has become an increasingly significant factor in the tournament, at times affecting the outcome of matches.