Most Americans know that individuals have credit ratings, but many of them don’t realize that countries have credit ratings too, and that even a small dip in the credit rating of a nation can have a huge economic impact. For decades, U.S. government debt has had a very, very high credit rating. U.S. Treasuries were generally considered among the safest, if not the safest, investments in the world. But that is starting to change. Just this past week, Moody’s Investors Service said that the U.S. government has been running up so much debt that there is actually a danger that the credit rating of U.S. government debt could be downgraded at some point in the future. That would make it significantly more expensive for the U.S. government to borrow more money, and it would cause interest on the U.S. national debt to skyrocket even further. (Read More...)