Last summer, August 5 to be exact, Standard & Poor's dropped the rating of United States debt below AAA for the first time in history. This year, with our flippers and masks barely out of the pool equipment room, Moody's downgraded the ratings of fifteen mega banks, including major American institutions such as Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase. Bank of America and Citigroup were downgraded to Baa2, just two ticks above "junk" status