This news should be shocking the youth. Sorry, we have a bunch of morons running the White House thinking they can get out of debt and yet this happens:

"NEW YORK (Reuters) - The United States lost its top-notch AAA credit rating from Standard & Poor's on Friday in an unprecedented reversal of fortune for the world's largest economy.

S&P cut the long-term U.S. credit rating by one notch to AA-plus on concerns about the government's budget deficits and rising debt burden. The move is likely to raise borrowing costs eventually for the American government, companies and consumers.

"The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics," S&P said in a statement.

The decision follows a bitter political battle in Congress over cutting spending and raising taxes to reduce the government's debt burden and allow its statutory borrowing limit to be raised.

On August 2 President Barack Obama signed legislation designed to reduce the fiscal deficit by $2.1 trillion over 10 years. But that was well short of the $4 trillion in savings S&P had called for as a good "down payment" on fixing America's finances.

The political gridlock in Washington and the failure to seriously address U.S. long-term fiscal problems came against the backdrop of slowing U.S. economic growth and led to the worst week in the U.S. stock market in two years this week.

The S&P 500 stock index fell 10.8 percent in the past 10 trading days on concerns that the U.S. economy may head into another recession and because the European debt crisis has been growing worse as it spreads to Italy."

SOURCE: http://news.yahoo.com/p-reconsidering-u-downgrade-cnbc-001207261.html

What does this mean for you? The user? This means that if this continues; your dollar bill won't mean anything. Your credit won't mean anything. And eventually, you won't be able to BUY anything with that piece of paper you call money.

The USA is already in debt. And when the S&P downgrades our credit from AAA to AA+, this is serious news. And SHOCKING to say the least.

So for you? Imagine you walk into the grocery store one morning and you find absolutely nothing. You won't find anything because you can't pay for it. The American currency right now is falling fast and there is NOTHING you can do about it.

Bitmap : i doubt it will become that bad,the pound fell at the start of the crysis but its more or less steadied now and unemployment has stopped growing,i doubt america will sink just yet.

thenumberone : LOL, you don't understand what is going on then.

We are in a less credit union than Brazil right now. Brazil, four years ago, was a third world country (In certain parts). It took a man with a 4th grade education to get elected to get their economy back on track and brazil is STRIVING right now. They are literally head deep in money right now with jobs.

Here? In the USA we have us purchasing products from all parts of the world. But what are we sending out? Money. Nothing but money.

Now, this may seem like a good thing. However, they are using our money to transfer currency to theirs. Meaning, it isn't much. We are slowly falling in debt. China is the main source, as we owe 14.24 TRILLION dollars to them.

now, what happens when China stands up and says "Hey guys, you need to pay up. Like now". Mind you, we have been giving them money by the boatload for years. And we are still slowly going up in debt.

What's going to happen? Either two things:

1- We go to war.
2- We get screwed.

Those are our options. Which is why this news should scare you. This country is about to have something SERIOUS happen and no one here is not going to like it.

You say it's not serious but take a look at the news. This is a storm we are watching right now that we are seeing about to happen! Enjoy your videogames and internet folks! Because soon you won't be able to afford it unless you are a millionare! And even if you are, you won't be able to have it for too long!

GG USA. GG!

I don't understand how a lot of the stuff in the U.S. works, since I'm a Canadian citizen and in stuff like this in school, I won't lie when I say I literally fell asleep when we were supposed to learn stuff like this. (How did I manage to get a B in that class I don't know because I don't remember anything from it) But considering Canada and the United States are extremely close trading partners, I'm going to guess that if something happens over there, it's going to heavily affect Canada as well.