US Downgraded to AA- by Egan-Jones

Ratings firm Egan-Jones cut its credit rating on the U.S. government to “AA-” from “AA,” citing its opinion that quantitative easing from the Federal Reserve would hurt the U.S. economy and the country’s credit quality.

From the ratings company’s Wikipedia entry:

Egan-Jones Ratings Company, also known as EJR, was founded in 1995 and actively rates the credit worthiness of approximately 2000+ high yield and high grade U.S. corporate debt issuers. Egan-Jones positions itself as unique among nationally recognized statistical rating organizations (NRSROs) for being wholly investor-supported, a structure designed to minimize the potential for conflicts of interest in assessing credit quality. The firm was granted NRSRO status on December 21, 2007, making it the ninth such organization to be recognized by the SEC.

Egan-Jones was first out of the box to downgrade Enron and WorldCom, as well as the U.S. credit rating last year.

Moody’s currently rates the United States Aaa, Fitch rates the country AAA, and Standard & Poor’s rates the country AA-plus. All three of those ratings have a negative outlook.

Read more at CNBC.