What is this nonsense? This has little to do with the threats to refuse to raise the debt ceiling. Wall Street wants austerity, damn it, and their handmaidens will do whatever they have to do to help them get it. Remember what Digby said: Eric Cantor has already said the GOP freshmen will vote to do it, and Democrats know it. So anything the Democrats insist they have to compromise is nothing but a cover story for what they already want to do.

There are multiple layers of converging interests here, so please, take everything with a large grain of salt:

The ratings agency Standard and Poor’s warned the United States on Monday that it could lose its coveted status as the world’s most secure economy if lawmakers don’t rein in the nation’s nearly $14.3 trillion debt. S&P changed its outlook on the United States from “stable” to “negative” and said the federal government could lose its AAA rating if officials fail to bring spending in line with revenues.

Oh, yeah. Those guys:

NEW YORK -- The major credit rating agencies repeatedly sold out to Wall Street banks, so addicted to short-term profits that they sacrificed the accuracy of their reports to maintain a competitive edge, a two-year government investigation has concluded. Rather than assess risk accurately, two major rating agencies sold their top seals of approval to their investment bank clients, blessing products that the agencies themselves knew to be undeserving, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations concluded in a report released Wednesday. By repeatedly debasing their standards, these agencies helped banks sell shoddy securities to unsuspecting investors, inflating the value of assets that turned out to be worth far less, the report has found. The senate panel, led by Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), levels a two-part charge against the rating agencies: Not only did these companies help inflate a dangerous bubble, the report says, but they also bear responsibility for popping it, as their abrupt downgrades of mortgage-linked securities in 2007 helped set off the panic that caused markets around the world to collapse.

You'd think, considering the part played by Standard and Poors, Moody's and Fitch in covering up these stinking piles of crap inadvertently rating mortgage derivatives as sound and crashing our economy, they would have the good grace to shut up and sit down.

But since nothing happened to hold accountable any of these craven clowns, what possible incentive do they have to tell the truth? And what reason do we have to believe them? After all, they've already displayed their willingness to sell their ratings to the highest bidder.

Let me remind you that bankers actually like the recession. They like the falling wages and the weak job market. The only thing that really worries them is inflation, and only because it raises wages and depresses the value of their holdings. Don't trust anything that comes out of their mouths, or the feckless minions who sell their souls to them.