If you write for a living — or even if you just majored in English — you will likely accumulate over a lifetime a list of cliches, hotel-room proverbs or misremembered turns of phrase that drive you crazy. My personal least favorite is the phrase "vise-a versa" instead of "vice versa," or any earnest reference to Washington, D.C. as "this town."
But another one that I try to avoid is the expression "the fish rots from the head," which is meant to say that when things go bad it's the fault of whomever is in charge. As someone who has seen a lifetime's worth of dead fish, I can tell you that all parts of a fish that is no longer living will
With that being said, just because an expression is not literally true does not mean that the metaphor doesn't hold true, as it does when applied to
These are two separate things, but they are related. Moody's downgrades are largely reflective of the overarching interest rate risks that banks face right now — costs of funds are going up, values of long-dated treasury bonds are going down, and margins are getting tighter. So over time, as those long-dated bonds mature and the zero-interest-rate episode between 2008 and 2021 works its way through the financial system, there is reason to think banks will navigate these straits and end up being fine.
But at the
That's the bad news. The good news is that, at least for now, there isn't another sovereign debt game in town that comes anywhere close to rivaling the United States. If you
That should be instructive for those individuals of all political stripes who are in positions of power. It is they who occupy the head of this collective fish we call the United States, and as such have the power to keep us healthy, alive and swimming in the water. If our governance risk continues to deteriorate, we all could be left to rot.