First, Standard & Poors threatened to downgrade the US credit rating
if cuts were not made to Social Security and Medicare to reduce the
deficit.

Then, two days after a bipartisan Senate committee found S&P's
misleading mortgage ratings to be a 'key cause' of the 2008 financial
crisis, the agency issued another downgrade threat.

A few months later, after the SEC announced they would investigate
agencies like S&P for fraud, S&P issued yet ANOTHER downgrade threat,
this time with the arbitrary ransom of $4 trillion in deficit
reduction which would likely include deep cuts to Social Security and
Medicare benefits.