To the OP Do you live paycheck to paycheck? Then you know overdraft charges and fees can be a super bitch. Just imagine the governments problem. Now imagine you owe 14+ trillion and have almost 100 trillion in obligations over the next ten years. O ya with only 20 trillion in income. So lets see 114 trillion(give or take) minus 20 trillion is 94 trillion in the hole. And no way to lower interest rates to temporarily fix things like they have been doing for.....forever. So the government is living loan to loan, not check to check even This perfect storm will cause any outside influence to have a major effect on stocks, since it is all monopoly money and tied to the Fiat US dollars value. The downgrade was used by insiders to make huge profits as the market fell. They(S&P) told us the down grade was coming with either debt deal congress would pass. Because congress cant do the simple math above we will get down graded again and again until we loose the reserve dollar status. As long as the dollar is the reserve currency the markets can recover because we can print our way out. However, once it looses that status the dollar will adjust instantly to other currencies, and all the worthless dollars around the world will come flooding home causing super hyper inflation. It is economic law according to history that all countries or empires that solve there bankruptcy with fiat currencies fail due to hyper inflation. Why are we any different End rant.