It is old news that the S&P rating agency downgraded the US foreign-credit rating from the coveted AAA to the less impressive AA+ on August 5. But as Republicans look ahead to the possibility that they might defeat Obama, they will inevitably seek ways to recover the exalted AAA status. If history is any guide, repairing the damage done to the U.S. bond rating will be a long, hard slog.

This article is the first part of a two-part examination of the contentious issue of how state governments' provision of goods and services to the public should be taxed under a VAT.

With the U.S. government deficit hovering around a trillion and a half dollars, our nation's creditworthiness is coming under increased scrutiny.

If you look at the U.S. budget trajectory with an eye on the lessons from Japan's recent history, there's a strong case that the U.S. rating should be cut immediately.

Before the dominance of rating agencies, investment banks had the responsibility for signaling sovereign creditworthiness by supporting after-issuance market-making in that debt.

To make financial markets less vulnerable to their inevitable cycles, it is an essential responsibility of both private financial actors and government officials to study, develop and implement countercyclical approaches.

Market-based measures of public pensions funding may better informstate governments and taxpayers of the liabilities and risks they face.

Failures in the regulation of large complex financial institutions played an important role in the financial crisis.