Free Republic

In an effort to allay fears that S&P’s judgment — one the White House has called “political” — will weaken global confidence in the U.S. economy, press secretary Jay Carney flatly dismissed the pessimistic assessment of how realistic a bipartisan deficit reduction agreement really is. When it comes to politics, Carney said, the White House knows better than S&P or the financial markets about what is possible in Washington. “We simply believe that that process is better,” Carney told reporters on Monday. “We believe that the political process will outperform the S&P’s expectations.”