My Father Would Also Be Disappointed

So, I evidently guessed wrong on the jobs report, but to be fair the report was only slightly above stagnation. In fact it hardly changed the course of the markets on Friday.  There was a minor blip, but until the ECB's announcement regarding buying Italian bonds, it appeared as if we were going to stay downhill for the day.  Thankfully, the European crisis might be starting to get resolved so at least the market won't need to worry about what is happening on the other side of the pond.

Of course, really what does that matter when:

Image Credit: Personal Friend

Yes, Standard and Poors, after messing up their initial calculations by $2 Trillion, has decided to downgrade the United States from its long standing AAA to AA+.  Indeed, that glorious bargain once again has turned out to be a dud.  I could spend a post on mentioning how S&P is full of shit, but there are others who have that covered.  So instead let's focus on what this means. It means higher interest rates all across the board which basically undoes everything Bernanke and the Fed attempted with QE1 and QE2. And since we (and by we I mean both parties in Congress, the President, and the media) decided that fiscal recovery was not important, loose monetary policy was all we had left. (Let's just pretend we weren't in a liquidity trap for a second)  So now we have nothing.  The only solace we can take in this is the fact it was announced afterhours on a Friday, so perhaps the market will calm down by Monday.

Dow Jones From Aug 4 to Aug 5, Net Loss of 451.83 pts, 3.8%

Then again when was the last time Wall Street was known for being calm?