Creditworthy?

At work today I noticed that Institutional Investor magazine published the Semi-Annual Country Credit survey results today. They showed, not surprisingly, that the US’s creditworthiness continues to fall, down 0.8 for the six months and over 1 point for the year, ranking 13, behind Canada and 12 European countries. For the six months, Iraq was up 8.8 points, UAE up 6.8 points, and Brazil up 5.2 points. Why? Well, the national debt is $9.5 Trillion, and YOUR tax dollars are paying interest on that - $406 Billion in fiscal 2006. This is about 30x NASA's budget, 15x Education's, and 8x that of the Dept of Transportation (we got bridges falling down and we're paying interest to the Chinese government). Why this matters: when you spend too much and have to borrow to do it, your credit score falls, you become a CREDIT RISK, fewer people want to invest in you, demand for American dollars go down so it gets weaker, and you pay that much more for anything overseas (like oil). So if you feel we are obligated to stay in Iraq until... I guess until they have a stable government (when have governments in the Middle East ever been stable)... know that we are bankrupting our country - and its citizens - in the process.