Greenspan: "This is not an issue of credit rating, the United States can pay any debt it has..."

"... because we can always print money to do that. So, there is zero probability of default."

Then what is it?

What I think the S&P thing did was to hit a nerve that there's something basically bad going on, and it's hit the self-esteem of the United States, the psyche. And it's having a much profounder effect than I conceived could happen because the economics of what they're talking about is very clear, and you cannot see any way in which we can go as we were on Friday for a vast movement of international funds into the dollar at very low interest rates and then turn on a dime. That is not going to happen. And so this is not the issue that they make it.