Janet Yellen: Fitch’s downgrading of US credit grade ‘arbitrary’

The US was stripped of its top-tier sovereign credit grade by Fitch Ratings, one of America’s top credit rating agencies, in a move that has pre-empted “fiscal deterioration” expected in the next few years, the agency said.

Fitch has hit out at the country’s ballooning fiscal deficits, criticising an “erosion of governance” that’s led to repeated debt limit clashes over the past two decades.

The credit grader cut the US one level from AAA to ...