Standard & Poor’s is defending its decision to strip the U.S. of its top credit rating. A blog on the Treasury’s website said the decision was “based on a $2 trillion mistake.” In an interview, S&P president Deven Sharma said there was debate over which discretionary-spending projections the firm should use in its decision, but it eventually used the projections that Treasury officials requested. Sharma said, “There was a change in assumption, but the dynamics of the near term and the medium term are still the same: The debt trajectory will continue to increase.” He added that the Obama administration’s resistance is “the same you would get from any other country or company. We are supposed to be objective, and others are always trying to convince us why the risk is less than we think it is.”
