“S&P Board Fires CEO For Telling The Truth, To Be Replaced With COO Of Citibank,” “Tyler Durden” of the Zero Hedge econo-blog reports:
Following years of pandering to client demands, and assigning trillions of dollars in fixed income securities with whatever rating money bought (among other things, a factor to the credit bubble and its subsequent implosion) S&P finally tried to do the right thing and tell the truth. However in this case it picked if not the worst, then certainly the most hypocritical credit in the world to expose – the US itself. Sure enough two weeks after the downgrade, someone made the phone call and the CEO Deven Sharma is no more. As for the kick square in the gonads: Sherma will be replaced with the COO of…you know it… the bank which demanded tens of billions in secret Fed bailout loans itself, Citibank, and whose existence is inextricably tied to America not seeing any more downgrades ever again.
As the FT reports, “The McGraw-Hill board made the decision to replace Mr Sharma at a meeting on Monday, where it also discussed an ongoing strategic review.” Alas, this is nothing but a case study of modern corporate reality in America: if you are not with the status quo, you are against it, and you are promptly booted out of it: anyone who does not share the visions of one glorious future built on ponzi schemes, houses of cards, and games of three card monte, will be promptly suicided, either physically or professionally.
We expect that this flagrant example of how the powers that be will deal with any dissenters will instill the fear of god in anyone at either Moody’s (or the French sycophants from Fitch) and nobody will ever again mention the words “US” and “downgrade” in the same sentence.
I don’t know about that — to paraphrase Trotsky, you may not be interested in reality, but reality is interested in you — and it’s only a matter of time — and money — before it catches up with the US once again.
Related: “As Failures Grow, Obama Blames Others.”
Update: Forbes has Timothy Geithner’s response to Sharma’s departure:
The S&P’s downgrade drew much criticism from U.S. officials including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner who said the S&P’s decision shows “a stunning lack of knowledge about basic U.S. fiscal budget math.”
Well, not everyone has downloaded the latest version of TurboTax before crunching the numbers.
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