Slate assures us that Kansas native who downgraded U.S. credit is a normal guy
John Chambers, the man at Standard & Poor’s who was responsible for downgrading the U.S. credit rating is a totally normal guy from Kansas, Slate tells us. Sam Tanenhaus, the editor at The New York Times Book Review, wrote an essay for Slate recalling his days hanging around with Chambers when they were students at Grinnell College in Iowa in the 1970s. He never gave off any signals then that he would one day be blamed for ruining the economy.
Tanenhaus writes in the piece — with the subhead “The guy who downgraded America’s credit rating is an old friend of mine. Here’s what he’s like” — that the media is casting Chambers as an “out-of-touch elitist.” But, he says, his pal doesn’t deserve that rap, and he’s really a Joe Six-Pack, a salt-of-the-earth type. He even gives several examples that show just how normal Chambers is.
