Government debt: Judging the judges | Business | The Guardian .

The right wing commentators don't like the Guardian's editorial. Which probably means it is spot on.

This is their conclusion on rating agencies:

[T]here have long been doubts about how much the big [rating] agencies are to be trusted, because they are usually paid by the would-be borrowers to assess their credit-worthiness. This time, there must be doubts about how impartial any part of the financial-services industry will be in assessing the economic policies of a government that has hit them with tax rises and bonus clampdowns.

This does not mean that Britain and the rest of the west have not racked up a huge debt in bailing out their banks and averting a second Great Depression; simply that the rating agencies are not the bodies to decide how and when that debt is repaid. The past couple of years should have finally given the lie to the notion that the City experts know best. Yet when a part of the finance industry tut-tuts over Labour's fiscal plans, the rightwing press treats it like the ruling of a high court judge. Why is that?

Because it is in their self interest to talk us into another recession from which they - as has been proven by the current recession - are the only beneficiaries.