I don’t think that will be enough. The European Union, you’ll recall, was fulminating against the ratings gang a couple of weeks back, and threatening to criminalize them. I regard the EU as a pestilence and have no use for the Euro, but their complaint is not without merit – as I noted in my weekend column. Nobody in Greece, Portugal, Spain or Ireland is talking about “out years” and exciting plans for spending cuts in 2020. They’re getting on with it now – and they’re still being downgraded.

By contrast, both US political parties are playing croquet on the lawn in August 1914 – and the ratings agencies are stringing along with them. Whatever the comparisons of debt-to-GDP ratios between Greece, Ireland and the US, the actual hard dollar amount involved here is of an entirely different order. The Boehner plan tells us that real fiscal discipline is impossible within the US political system. At some point, the ratings guys have to call them on it – or render their system meaningless.