Fitch Ratings left in place its AAA assessment of US federal debt but revised the outlook for long-term bonds to negative, the Wall Street ratings agency said Monday, DPA reported.
Fitch is the first of the major ratings agencies to comment since last week's failure by a special committee tasked by Congress to find at least 1.5 trillion dollars in deficit cuts over the next 10 years to slow the growth of government debt.
"The affirmation of the US 'AAA' sovereign rating reflects still strong economic and credit fundamentals," Fitch said in a statement.
"The US dollar's status as the pre-eminent global reserve currency and depth of the US Treasury market render financing risks minimal and underpin a low cost of fiscal funding."
The US national debt is at 15 trillion dollars, about 100 per cent of gross domestic product.
The panel of six Democrats from President Barack Obama's party and six opposition Republicans was in closed-door negotiations for weeks before announcing that it could not meet a November 13 deadline that Congress had imposed on itself.
The negative rating outlook means that Fitch sees a likelihood of greater than 50 per cent that the AAA rating will be cut in the next two years, reflecting the agency's "declining confidence that timely fiscal measures necessary to place US public finances on a sustainable path and secure the US 'AAA' sovereign rating will be forthcoming," after the failure of Congress' joint committee.
Standard & Poor's, the leading Wall Street ratings agency, downgraded US debt from AAA to AA-plus in August, after a deficit standoff in Congress was settled only days before a possible bond default, in a compromise that led to the creation of the now-failed committee.