Last Friday Moody's became the last of the major credit rating agencies to downgrade the outlook for the United States.\ Yes, these are the same agencies that failed spectacularly in the run-up to the Great Financial Crisis. But even so, the loss of America's AAA standing is telling --- not just economically, but politically and morally. It reflects a nation unwilling to govern itself with discipline or foresight.\ We now carry \$36.5 trillion in debt. Based on events this week in D.C. it is only going to get worse. This is not a case of the President and Congress fiddling while the nation burns. They are throwing fuel on a raging fire and dancing around the inferno in ignorant delight. But here's the truth we never say out loud:\ We are asking our children and grandchildren to borrow money --- not to invest in their future, but to fund our lifestyles---to support our retirements, our healthcare, and the promises we made and continue to make without regard to the impact on them.\ How many Americans would ever tell their kids to take out a loan so they could send the money upward, to them? Almost no one---except the most desperate, who wouldn't need to ask.\ And yet that's exactly what we're doing --- silently, structurally, every single year.\ I wrote this piece a few weeks back: