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The primary analyst on Standard & Poor’s cut to the U.S. credit rating is a Canadian.

Nikola Swann, based in S&P’s offices in Toronto, was one of a committee of senior analysts around the world who pulled the trigger on the cut to AA+ from AAA on Friday night, a decision which has faced intense criticism from Washington.

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Mr. Swann said S&P’s action boiled down to three reasons: politicians in Washington are taking too to long to come to a final plan to bring the country’s finances to order, American citizens themselves seem to be largely unaware of, or are hugely divided over which route to take and the deficit reduction measures currently planned are simply not big enough.

“The debt debate has dragged on without any policy distractions…and what we see is very little progress,” Mr. Swann said in an interview Saturday evening.

The deal to cut US$2.4-trillion from U.S. debt over 10 years is mostly back-end loaded. Only US$917-billion in cuts will be made immediately and Congress still has to come to agreement on another US$1.5-trillion by the end of the year. That is unlikely to be easy.