S&P downgraded as market embraces US treasury notes

A few people are looking a bit silly right now.

Bloomberg:

Eleven days after lowering the credit rating on the U.S. for the first time, Standard & Poor’s is suffering a downgrade among global investors as American bonds are proving world beaters -- undermining S&P’s mathematical assumptions -- and prompting disbelief among political scientists months after the company upgraded China because of the stability fostered by Communist Party rule.

Since S&P, the New York-based subsidiary of McGraw-Hill Cos., dropped the U.S. to AA+ from AAA on Aug. 5, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note, a benchmark for everything from home mortgages to car loans, has declined to as low as 2.03 percent from a high this year of 3.77 percent, with American debt on pace in August for the biggest monthly gain since December 2008. Interest rates on American bonds are lower today than on most of the countries with AAA ratings by S&P and the Treasury recently financed its outstanding debt at the lowest cost ever.

If anything, the decision from S&P, the largest ratings provider, resulted in an upgrade of U.S. securities as the American bond market outperformed world bond indexes during the period since the downgrade by S&P. Moody’s Investors Service and Fitch Ratings, the two next biggest rating companies, affirmed their AAA rankings on the U.S.