Can the US get back its AAA rating?

John Chambers, Standard & Poor Managing Director: “We assume the joint select committee will deliver the goods: The $1.5T in savings. And if they don’t, the sequestration mechanism will come into play. So now what we’re talking about is additional measures are going to be on the table. Now that we’re in the situation that we’re in, and we’re down to AA+, we’re going to be looking for the actual goods to be delivered. The five countries that lost their AAA rating that got it back – Australia, Canada, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland – they got it back over a period of 9 to 18 years. Now how did they do that? All of them undertook significant fiscal reform that markedly reduced their level of debt to GDP.”