From Reuters:

Moody’s on Friday lowered its outlook on the U.S. credit rating to “negative” from “stable” citing large fiscal deficits and a decline in debt affordability, a move that drew immediate criticism from President Joe Biden’s administration.

The move follows a rating downgrade of the sovereign by another ratings agency, Fitch, this year, which came after months of political brinkmanship around the U.S. debt ceiling.

Federal spending and political polarization have been a rising concern for investors, contributing to a selloff that took U.S. government bond prices to their lowest levels in 16 years.

“It is hard to disagree with the rationale, with no reasonable expectation for fiscal consolidation any time soon,” said Christopher Hodge, chief economist for the U.S. at Natixis. “Deficits will remain large … and as interest costs take up a larger share of the budget, the debt burden will continue to grow.”

My view for a long time is that the US dollar is knackered as a default currency of the world. This position of the US is unrecoverable and the world’s geopolitical structures will shift a lot. War might save the US economy, but not much else. If you don’t own gold stocks, go and find a good one and hang on.

UPDATE: I have just seen this post by Tom, which is mandatory reading. It’s not a pretty picture.