Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen criticized Fitch Ratings's decision to downgrade the U.S. economy to a "AA+" rating in remarks Wednesday. Fitch announced the downgrade Tuesday evening, citing years of partisan budget squabbles and the ballooning U.S. debt, which dropped the U.S. from its "AAA" rating. Yellen's comments Wednesday came during remarks delivered to IRS employees and mirrored the initial statement she released Tuesday night reacting to the decision. "Fitch’s decision is puzzling in light of the economic strength we see in the United States.

A US credit downgrade by Fitch was "entirely unwarranted," Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Wednesday, pushing back against the second-ever decrease by a major ratings agency following repeated debt limit standoffs in Washington.

"Fitch's decision is puzzling in light of the economic strength we see in the United States," Yellen said at an event in Virginia, while reiterating her disagreement with the action.

WASHINGTON — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Wednesday denounced Fitch's decision to downgrade the United States' longstanding credit rating that caused stocks to tumble. Yellen, who spoke during a visit with Danny Werfel, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, called the move "surprising" considering the nation's strong economic recovery from the pandemic. Fitch cited "expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years," and "repeated debt-limit political standoffs" when it downgraded the nation's rating to AA+ from AAA.

The United States needs to tackle the recurrence of debt limit standoffs and find "long-term" solutions for growing fiscal issues if it seeks a credit upgrade, a Fitch Ratings senior director said in an interview Wednesday. The comments by Richard Francis on CNBC came a day after Fitch took the United States' top-tier AAA rating down a notch to AA+, drawing fiery pushback from the White House and Treasury Department. In downgrading the US rating, only the second-ever by a major ratings agency, Fitch pointed to a ballooning government debt...

Republican lawmakers are blaming President Biden for the decision by Fitch to downgrade the U.S. credit rating on Tuesday. Fitch, one of the "Big Three" credit rating agencies, issued a shock decision to downgrade the country’s debt rating from the top level, AAA, to AA+. The company blamed "expected fiscal deterioration over the next three years, a high and growing general government debt burden, and the erosion of governance," which it said led to "repeated debt limit standoffs and last-minute resolutions." Biden’s GOP critics said it was Biden’s weeks-long refusal...

Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, said Fitch’s downgrade of the U.S. credit rating shouldn’t be too concerning about how investors view the country’s ability to pay its debt. In an interview on CNBC Wednesday, from his annual bus tour of local branches, Dimon said the U.S. is home to the “best economy the world’s ever seen” and that the ratings agency's decision won’t change that. "It doesn't really matter that much. The markets decide. It's not the rating agencies,” Dimon said of the world’s belief about the...

An increasingly unstable fiscal outlook and an elected government that won't do anything about it have triggered America's second-ever credit rating downgrade. Fitch Ratings downgraded the U.S. government's credit rating from "AAA" to "AA+" on Tuesday afternoon, signaling to investors that America's Treasury bonds are a qualitatively less ideal purchase.