Weiss Offers Sovereign Debt Ratings For First Time

I watched part of the video. Didn't see the list. I'd be interested to know how many of the countries that are listed above us are ones that we are currently giving money to in the form of foreign aid.

But your comment, trdhrdr, makes me wonder when WE'RE in a crisis, how many countries will come to our aid? I don't recall much help when Hurricane Katrina came about. From what I remembered, all the money towards the efforts were made by Americans. When are we gonna learn?

Actually Collecta83, your neighbours in Canada made a fairly heavy response in terms of real relief to Katrina.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadi...cane_Katrina

Sorry, anybody who ranks the Philippines higher than the US loses credibility in my mind. Now the guy may technically be correct given the selectively small slice of governmental data analysis performed by their proprietary methodology, but let's not read too much into an obvious grab for eyeballs. Believe me from first hand experience, despite being one of the most beautiful archipelagos in the world with some of the nicest people on the planet, you don't want trade a median income life here for one there. That said, the US does need to get its fiscal act together and that's up to the politicians, not exclusively the Fed.

If they made it via trading with us, then they earned it. If they made it via International Welfare... er... Foreign Aid, then shame on US for handing it over.

You almost gotta wonder how one nation with a debt figure so high that most people's brain can't even comprehend the number, could get a passing grade of a C, even with other country's ahead of us like Indonesia and Mexico....

Junior e

Know where your frustrations are coming from BUT have to chime in here "Government employees are retiring with pensions that are twice as high as they were making while working. All of them are retiring when they're 50 years old"

Being a retired government employee and Marine I must correct you.

99.9% of the old Civil Service workers who could retire under the old retirement system had to have 30 years of service and be 55 to retire on 75% of there income at the most - there health insurance and that takes away $400 to $450.00 per month from their pension. Anyone that started to work for the government or civil service after think it was 1985 they are under the social security system just like everyone else.

Do not place 99.9% of the civilian government work force to the Washington Mafia of our elected representatives class as they only represent 1% of the government employees. The government employees are just like everyone else and for the last two years not getting any cost of living expenses and probably never will again. They are just as mad at the Washington representatives as you.

MY HUGE government civil service pension is $600.00 per month and I made allot more than that when I was working. If I were also not retired from the Marines and collecting that retirement pension also I could not live on my HUGE government pension.

Bruce... thank you for your service to our country. It really is appreciated by many of us.

I understand your frustration with DC. Many state and local government workers are just as frustrated with DC as any of the non-government employed public. One big difference is that most of us are not saddled with a bunch of unfunded mandates and other job requirements from DC and then criticized for not doing the job of handling that mess as well as was expected. My folks used to work for the State of Oregon. They both had a lot of comments to make on just how much more difficult than necessary their jobs had become because of the dumb things that they were required to do by federal law. The list was virtually endless.