Democrats and Republicans in Washington need to stop blaming each other over the unprecedented US credit rating downgrade and find solutions, China’s official Xinhua news agency said early on Monday.
The demand came in a lengthy and harshly worded commentary, the latest in a series in China’s state media.
“Disappointingly, instead of reflecting on themselves and sitting down to fix problems in a cooperated way, the Democrats and Republicans… are questioning the creditability of the downgrade ruling and blaming each other for the ever-first shame of slipping out top-credit rating club,” it said.
China — which sat on the world’s biggest foreign exchange reserves of around $3.20 trillion as of the end of June — is the largest foreign holder of US Treasuries.
The Chinese government has yet to comment publicly on the downgrade.
Ratings agency Standard & Poor’s docked the United States from a sterling AAA to a AA+ rating Friday, largely because of the failure of bitterly divided US leaders to reach a consensus on containing the country’s spiraling debt.
Washington has been split over how to reduce its more than $14 trillion debt without further hobbling the sluggish economic recovery, and even the limited debt deal came after a bruising partisan battle.
Standard & Poor’s warned Sunday that there was a one in three chance of a further US credit downgrade, as lawmakers traded blame for the failure to rein in the country’s massive debt.
“During the angry finger-pointing, the US politicians seemed to have forgotten Wall Street’s severest losses in almost three years last week,” the Xinhua commentary said.
“Forgotten mounting concerns about double-dip recession, and forgotten the criticism over their irresponsibility showed during the debt arm-twisting from all over the world.”
It continued: “The alarm has rung. It is time for the naughty boys in Washington to stop chicken games before they cause more damages.
“It is time for the policy-makers in Washington to settle down, to show some sense of responsibility and fix their fiscal problems.”
The Xinhua piece, which followed a similar stinging rebuke by the influential state news agency on Saturday, concluded: “History is a guide.
“What we should learn from the financial crisis is to be selfish could only hurt yourself and drag others into water.
“It is time for the US to tighten belts and solve structural problems in order to resume reputation and restore world confidence.”
Markets had closed by the time the downgrade was announced on Friday, but there were indications that the S&P move, along with spreading eurozone debt contagion, could make for rough Monday openings across the world.
