Anyone wondering what President Obama will face when he arrives in South Korea on Wednesday for a global financial summit meeting need look no further than an announcement by China\u2019s leading state-endorsed rating agency, which downgraded the United States\u2019 credit rating on Tuesday \u201d\u201d and provocatively questioned American leadership of the global economy.<\/p>\n
The agency cited the Federal Reserve\u2019s decision to pump more money into the United States economy and warned of Washington\u2019s \u201cdeteriorating debt repayment capability\u201d\u009d and \u201cthe serious defects in the United States economic development and management model,\u201d\u009d which it predicted would lead to \u201cfundamentally lowering the national solvency.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
In the rest of the world, the United States is still the gold standard of credit risks, and the Chinese downgrade is not expected to have much real impact. But the sharply worded attack from the country that is buying billions of dollars in American debt each month was just the latest rhetorical assault on the United States, as officials from China to Germany to Brazil suggest that Washington\u2019s addiction to debt has greatly diminished its credibility.<\/p>\n