Standard & Poor's shook the financial world by downgrading America's credit rating from AAA to AA+ for the first time in history. Then Moody's disagreed. Today, the third agency of its kind, Fitch Ratings, says "the key pillars" of the country's "exceptional creditworthiness remain in tact." It retained the AAA rating, too. Jeffrey Manns is Associate Professor of Law at George Washington University.
