S&P restates political threat to U.S. AAA rating

``The risks of the U.S. losing its prized triple-A rating over the medium term have increased as the country faces a political impasse and nears its debt ceiling, Standard and Poor's said on Tuesday. While the ability to adapt both fiscal and monetary policy was a positive for the United States, the risk of a credit rating downgrade had increased due to a lack of political consensus on how to employ that flexibility, Moritz Kraemer, head of sovereign credit ratings for Europe at Standard & Poor's, said on Tuesday.''