Even A Broken Clock Is Right Twice A Day

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is not particularly well-known for his solid, feet-on-the-ground ideas. But this time our alien abductee has done something that makes perfect sense. In the middle of the ongoing crisis over the budget and the debt-ceiling, the major credit-rating agencies have been making a bad situation worse with their doom and gloom predictions.

Kucinich has asked the United States Justice Department to investigate those selfsame credit agencies. Kucinich is attacking the agencies from the left, of course, but that doesn't make the need for an investigation any less real. Moody's, Standard & Poors and Fitch, who are now threatening to downgrade the credit rating of the United States, are the same people who gave A+ to AAA ratings to the very financial institutions which brought about the stock market and mortgage crashes. They sounded like the mouthpieces for Rep. Barney Frank (D-Massachusetts) who was declaring that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in great shape. Frank was in bed (literally) with one of the executives of Fannie Mae. With the credit agencies joining them, that bed must have been very crowded.

Says Kucinich: "We are not a poor country. We're the richest country in the world and to tempt the markets to further manipulate us--these, these ratings agencies--there ought to be a Justice Department investigation of them." Along with the threats of a downgrade if a bill isn't passed soon, Kucinich may be on to something, though he may have its meaning wrong. There are strong but so far unsubstantiated rumors that the credit agencies are willing to back off if the Senate adopts the Reid plan proposed by Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nevada) over the Boehner (R-Ohio) plan in the House. Given that we don't even know what either plan really entails from minute to minute, why Reid over Boehner?

Kucinich says "[The agencies] were for sale for anyone who wanted a good rating. You put your money down, you get a good rating. Now they're telling the United States of America that they're going to downgrade our rating. Are you kidding me? It's time for us to downgrade the rating agencies." There's a lot of truth in that statement.

Naturally Kucinich, a kooky leftist, blames the influence of evil capitalists buying off the agencies for the current threats. But he forgets another important group which exerts at least equal influence, and that is powerful Democrats with their own private profit-motives and political needs who are more than willing to threaten the agencies right back while colluding with them at the same time. See Barney Frank and Harry Reid, above.

I agree with Kucinich on the need for an investigation of the agencies, though for somewhat different reasons. It may also be too little, too late. Still, the major flaw in his argument is that it would be Eric Holder's Justice Department which would be doing the investigating. That's a little like O J Simpson investigating his wife's murder. Holder's highly-politicized Justice Department is not going to do anything to upset the Democrats' plan to exploit the crisis.

The agencies might even be right in warning of a looming negative credit rating. But like the thirteenth strike of the clock, all that went before it is called into question. And like the broken clock, Kucinich may be right for the wrong reasons. Meanwhile, the other tick-tock continues. Where is the budget? Where are the adults? Where is the solution that would stave off further economic crisis and put the lie to the agencies' threats? Where are the statesmen who can produce principled compromise?

And those are my final horological metaphors.