“Paybacks are a bitch,” as they say. What was Standard & Poor’s thinking back in August 2011, when the ratings agency took the Red, White, and Blue’s AAA rating away? A rating the most powerful government in the history of the world had held for 70 years. S&P downgraded long-term US debt to AA-plus. That score ranks lower than over a dozen governments, including Liechtenstein’s, and is level with Guernsey’s and France’s. McGraw-Hill Companies (S&P’s [...] S&P On the Kill List appeared in the Daily Reckoning . Subscribe to The Daily Reckoning by visiting signup for an Agora Financial newsletter .