Free Republic

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: S&P has indeed gone ahead and downgraded Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and countless banks even as we speak. Let me tell you what that means: That means everything is gonna cost us more. Everything ultimately involving credit, capital, is gonna cost more. Standard & Poor's, is this right? They're even downgrading Warren Buffett? From the Wall Street Journal: "Berkshire Hathaway, other insurers get negative tag from Standard & Poor's after Standard & Poor's bit an appendage from the US' credit rating, the credit rating firm is smelling blood in the water at Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. "S&P...

President Barack Obama made two fundamental mistakes today in his press conference which was intended to calm the markets. First, he did not lead off with a moment of reflection on the loss of American military lives in Afghanistan over the weekend. Second, he completely missed the boat on why Standard & Poor’s (S&P) lowered the credit rating of the United States. The President should have led off his press conference with prayers and condolences for the families of the 30 members of the U.S. military who lost their lives in Afghanistan over the weekend. Instead, the President waited until...

NEW YORK) Stocks accelerated their selloff in heavy volume Monday as investors fled from risky assets following S&P's downgrade of U.S.'s credit rating last week in addition to ongoing uncertainty over the euro zone crisis. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped sharply to break below the psychologically-significant 11,000 mark, led by Bank of America and Alcoa, after logging its steepest weekly decline since Mar. 2009 last week. The S&P 500 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq were down almost 5 percent. August is already on track to be the worst month for both indexes since Oct. 2008.

Remember how during the debt ceiling negotiations Obama went before the country what seemed like almost every day in order to call for tax increases, vilify the GOP, attack corporate jet depreciation schedules yet pretend to be a centrist? Well, his poll numbers still haven't recovered from that so you have to wonder why he felt the need to go before the country today with markets imploding. Did he think he could reassure the world with his magical speech-giving ability? Well if he did, he failed miserably. Check out this chart: I do realize markets were imploding anyway, but they...

Investors spooked by both the downgrade of the U.S. debt late Friday and the direction of the economy continued to sell stocks Monday, sending market indexes down 5% to 6%. The Dow Jones industrial average fell by more than 600 points, dropping below 11,000 for the first time since November. The Dow fell more than 633 points, to 10,810.83. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was off 6.66%, closing at 1,119.46, and the Nasdaq Composite index fell by 6.9%, closing down nearly 175 points at 2,357.69. Another down day on Wall Street followed declines in overseas markets earlier in the...

Credit rating agency Standard and Poor's on Monday downgraded the debt of mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The downgrades to AA+ are part of the continued fallout from the agency's decision to drop U.S. sovereign debt to AA+, an unprecedented move that rattled investors and sparked concern over the long-term impact of the action It was widely expected that S&P's downgrade of U.S. debt would roll downhill to other entities that are closely linked to the federal government.

CNBC just broke in and told the audience that the President has requested airtime and will speak to the nation at 1300hrs EST (12 noon central, 10 AM PST) on the US national debt downgrade.Developing...

Market watchers and technical analysts have often pointed out that financial markets often turn-around, in one direction or the other, on Tuesdays, specifically at about 10:15am. So, if history repeats itself and the pattern holds true, perhaps we will see a bounce tomorrow and a rally to a lower high in the stock market (a short-term high that is lower than the high in stock prices set back in July, hence a lower high). Technical analysts look at the cycles, trends and movement of markets in price and time, which is different from fundamental analysis which focuses on the underlying...

Liberal firebrand Michael Moore called on President Obama to respond to the U.S. credit downgrade by arresting the leaders of the credit-ratings agencies. On his Twitter feed Monday, the Oscar-winning film director also blamed the 2008 economic collapse on Standard & Poor’s — apparently because it and other credit-ratings agencies did not downgrade mortgage-based bonds, which encouraged the housing bubble and let it spread throughout the economy. “Pres Obama, show some guts & arrest the CEO of Standard & Poors. These criminals brought down the economy in 2008& now they will do it again,” Mr. Moore wrote.

<p>He was a half hour late. His head turned from side to side as if he were attending a tennis match. He practically never looked in the camera, as if he were averting our gaze. And those were the strong parts of President Obama’s disastrous speech.</p>

It was about time the president weighed in with a statement about the U.S. credit rating downgrade by Standard & Poor’s. And that’s not just because the reporters in the room were getting antsy after the president was 50 minutes late getting started. Rather, Obama’s press briefing Monday afternoon about the Standard & Poor’s downgrade came after a weekend in which the primary messaging strategy from the White House seemed to be excuses. Following a bizarre back and forth Friday evening in the news over whether the ratings agency got its math right—a “has it really come to this?” moment...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Does anybody now doubt that this is on purpose? I mean, after all, Barack Obama inherits a AAA credit rating from George W. Bush, and look what he does to it. Obama is always running around complaining and whining and moaning about all that he inherited from George W. Bush. Well, he inherited a AAA credit rating, an unemployment rate of 5.7%. Does anybody doubt that this is on purpose? Well, look, my credit rating doesn't suck. There are a lot of individual Americans whose credit ratings aren't in trouble. The United States has never been in...