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Link—Ocean Mapping

Mapping is too expensive- roughly 56 million per 1000 square miles of the ocean

A survey ship from Dutch engineering company Fugro , carrying 40 crew and technicians, began mapping out an area larger than the Netherlands, some 1000 miles (1,600 km) east of the northwest coast of Australia. The search for the lost plane is being coordinated by the Australian Transportation Safety Board and is expected to cost 60 million Australian dollars ($56 million) over the first year. "It's a rough area," Rob Luijnenburg, strategy director at Fugro, which usually conducts surveys for oil and telecommunications companies, said in an interview on Thursday. "The area has mountains, ridges, valleys, and you can't see a lot down there unless you make it visible with technology," he said. "For the first phase you need a good map. Once you have that you can plan the next phase." It will take roughly three months for the Fugro Equator survey ship, which is being assisted by a Chinese naval vessel, to map out the typography of the ocean floor. Once an accurate map has been constructed with the aid of computers on board the ship, searchers can begin more detailed, slower surveys in a bid to find the wreck itself, using unmanned robots and submarines to search the ocean floor.

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Downgrade I/L

Accumulating debt causes S&P downgrade

Those are some of the positives. Demerits cited by Standard & Poor's include political polarization in Washington, enormous levels of government debt and ongoing annual budget deficits. Demographic pressures and their impact on Social Security and Medicare spending remain a long-term challenge. The government deficit has shrunk to about 6 percent of GDP from 12 percent in 2009, Standard & Poor's noted. Most of the improvement has come from rising revenue, the halt to a temporary reduction in Social Security contributions, higher tax rates on top earners and some spending restraints, the report said. Government debt, as measured against GDP, stands at about 80 percent and should remain around that level through 2017, but that's close to the time when spending on entitlement programs begins to exert a bigger drag. By then, the government's financial situation will begin to deteriorate again without new policies to boost revenue or curb spending, according to Standard & Poor's. If that is allowed to happen, the reaction of creditors might not be so muted a second time around.

Downgrade crushes the US economy

IBD 10 (IBD, Investor’s Business Daily, February 8th 2010, “Digging A Debt Hole,” http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/020810-520534-digging-a-debt-hole.htm)

Geithner: Downgrade of U.S. government debt is out of the question. / Fiscal Recklessness: Worried about surging U.S. debt? Don't be. Some of Washington's top officials say it's all under control. Of course, the Titanic's owners ensured its passengers that it was the safest ship ever built. / Speaking to ABC News over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner pooh-poohed the very notion that U.S. debt could be downgraded from its current good-as-gold AAA rating, a move that would trigger higher interest rates, a jump in inflation and billions of dollars of capital flowing overseas. / "Absolutely not," Geithner responded, when asked if the U.S. could lose its triple-A . "That will never happen to this country." / We hope he's right. Because if he's not, it would be a financial disaster of unparalleled proportions, ending America's more than 100-year reign as the world's top economy. / Echoing Geithner's comments, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said "we can handle" the current debt of $12.4 trillion, or $9 trillion if you subtract the money we owe to Social Security, Medicare and other government programs. / Of course, Conrad's no fool. Even he knows this can't continue. / "If we stay on the course we're on," Conrad continued, the debt is "completely and totally unsustainable — the debt will approach 400% of the gross domestic product of the United States." / Still, hearing two top officials who have presided over the greatest expansion of debt in U.S. history talk about fiscal responsibility is a bit unsettling. / For many, all this abstract talk about debt has taken on an unreal quality. Be assured, it's very real. Those little pieces of paper are a form of fiscal bondage for our kids and grandkids. Today, we owe $12.4 trillion — or $40,260 for every man, woman and child in our country, and that's expected to nearly double over the next 10 years. / All of that debt will weigh heavily on the economy. When the government borrows so much, it can shoulder private businesses and entrepreneurs out of the market. No surprise, then, that the economy grows more slowly, businesses create fewer jobs, workers get fewer raises, and our standard of living gets squeezed in a vise of our own making. / As Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard noted in a recent global study, having too much debt carries a stiff growth penalty. "Above (debt ratios of) 90%, median (GDP) growth rates fall by 1%, and average growth falls considerably more," they say. / Well, guess what? On a gross debt basis, we hit 98% of GDP this year. So we don't have to wait for the debt Armageddon. It's here. / It's time to end this intergenerational child abuse. / Over the next 10 years, we'll run up deficits of nearly $11 trillion, adding further to our debt, according to the Office of Management and Budget. Long-term, according to a 2008 government report, we're $65 trillion in the hole — more than the entire world's output. / True, we have lots of assets. But the debt hole we've dug is growing too fast and can't be filled with higher taxes and more spending. / If we don't reverse course, and soon, the recent prediction by Moody's of a U.S. debt downgrade won't seem impossible at all, as Geithner suggests. It will seem prophetic.

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