Japan's sovereign credit rating is downgraded by S+P

Japan credit downgrade:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-27/yen-slumps-as-s-p-reduces-japanese-credit-rating-aussie-dollar-declines.html

Warnings for the US:
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70Q8JI20110127?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

Japan currently has a debt to GDP ratio of over 200%.  Generally when 3rd world nations hit a debt to GDP of 120-130% the creditors get very nervous.  But Japan was too big to fail and so the credit just kept rolling. 

Every one of these individual debt Ponzi schemes that we see happening globally has its own slant and its own reason why "it's different for us this time".  All off that is just marketing cover for the con job - they are all just different incarnations of Madoff.  Japan's story is that they owe much of the debt to themselves and that somehow makes it OK.  Balderdash!  Japanese people are now beginning to retire in droves.  Since labor is the source of all new value creation in an economy and since old people in retirement don't work but still continue to consume, it's pretty clear that Japan is in deep trouble.  How are these people going to eat and otherwise live when they have retired and the government defaults on their promised payments?  Japanese people seem to believe that its government has deep pools of money someplace with which to make those payments.  Perhaps the retirees believe that young people will support them through increased taxation and massive inflation.  Good luck with that.  The young people of Japan will figure out that the prior generation is stealing from them and they will eventually revolt just as is happening in other places around the world.  It doesn't take too much imagination to see that Japan has become the land of the setting sun.