joining us now, jonathan thomas, ceo of american century investments and michelle girard, rbs senior economist. thank you very much for joining us. great to see you both. >> thanks for having us, maria. >> let me ask you, jonathan. you are running a major investment firm and here we have the headlines, s&p discussing whether or not to downgrade, moody's threatening to cut america's credit rating as the fight goes on. how does that impact your decision making and where to allocate money and where to investigate? >> obviously one of the things it has done is the whole debt ceiling issue has captured the attention of the united states and the investors. what it's doing is raising people's awareness in a very healthy way about the real problems we have in this country. in turn we're seeing investors have much less conviction about the markets. >> michelle, what about you? this feels like washington really had a hans the get something done, and chop away at the deficit, and yet once again politics got in the way. would a temporary deal to raise the debt ceiling be a bad things? temporary?