It was last Friday afternoon when the announcement is made about the S and P's decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+. Money Analyst Bill Valentine with Valentine Ventures says in the long run, it probably won't be meaningful to the Treasury Bond itself; but in the short run, it could be destablizing. "Is it a meaningful event that they would downgrade our credit? Yeah. Is S & P any more respected relative to Fitch or Moody’s? I guess it depends on whom you ask, but I would not say that there's an industry wide perception that S & P carries some greater clout than the other two. And I suspect that if S & P does, typically they tend to all fall in line, so I would assume that in a reasonably short order that if one did down grade, the other two would do a similar thing over the course of the next couple of weeks." Valentine says the reputations of all three credit rating agencies is not great now, because of their possible conflicts on interest in the credit crisis; but nonetheless, it will cause a big black eye for the U.S.