Charlie Rose Talks to S&P's David Beers

The most important question in my mind is why—and why now—did you make this decision?
On the why, we've been talking for quite some time about the progressive deterioration in U.S. public finances, which is not new and it's not because of the recession. It's a process that has been unfolding for much of the past decade. And then of course, on top of that, the cyclical downturn because of the severe recession has made it worse. If the Administration and Congress don't get around to addressing those trends, they will go on deteriorating because of the aging of the population—things like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

As to why now, we made this decision because when we look at the highly polarized debate going on in Washington and the very strong differences between the Republicans and the Democrats, including the Administration, on what might be done, we think it's unlikely they will be able to narrow that gap, particularly over the next couple of months. And there is no assurance, even after the 2012 elections, that the two sides would be able to come together and begin to have a big impact on what is still a rising U.S. government debt burden. When we contrast the U.S. fiscal story with a number of other key sovereigns at the AAA level—Europe and also Canada in North America—there we see governments actually taking steps and outlining programs to reduce their structural deficits. And in the U.S., of course, we're still talking about it.