Facebook, Twitter abuzz with S&P's Deven Sharma's US economy downgrade from AAA

It's not just the Obama Administration that is trying to figure out the meaning and consequences of America's credit downgrade. Workers in Indian IT firms, fresh college graduates, retail investors, NRIs and some proud residents of Jharkhand are all keen to figure out what the global economic and credit crisis means to them.

They flocked to Internet and social media sites, trying to make sense of the downgrade of America's credit rating, express their views and understand how the development affects their lives. Jobs, particularly jobs in the software sector, were the main object of attention of people online as they tried to comprehend the fallout of Standard & Poor's downgrade of the gold standard AAA rating of the world's largest economy.

Questions about the fate of the Indian IT services industry, and the jobs linked to it, were the most frequent queries by visitors to economictimes. com, the website of this newspaper. Among those apprehensive about what Standard & Poor's downgrade of US sovereign debt means was Sonu Halder from Kolkata, who was hired by a reputed IT company last year but has not received his joining date yet.

"Will this negative sentiment impact joining dates or will there be any chance of salary cuts?" he asked. India's ITeS and BPO companies, which hire thousands of young people every month, are just about recovering from the global economic slowdown. They export software worth about $60 billion every year and employ more than 2 million people.

TWITTER STAR DEVEN SHARMA

Many visitors were perplexed by what the downgrade is all about and how it affects ordinary people. "Exactly whom does US owe trillions of dollars to?" Sudhindra Savanur from Mumbai wanted to know. Others, mainly from the US, wanted to know whether the downgrade would affect the value of the rupee against the dollar.

"If we are planning to relocate back to my country, is this a good time to transfer all my money in dollars to rupees?" asked Rajani. On the microblogging site Twitter, 'S&P' and 'AAA' were one of the trending topics and the hashtags 'downgrade' and 'double-dip' were also viral with people posting links and commenting on them.

Many Americans vehemently attacked S&P, saying the way the ratings agency did it was "ridiculous." "They are not political pundits and have no place to say 'the process was messy'." In India, Deven Sharma, the head of S&P, was the Twitter star who topped the social search for being the Jharkhand- born Indian-American who downgraded the US economy.

Tweets such as "The man behind the worldwide chaos is a desi" and "Deven Sharma is now ragging the entire global economy" flowed in. While many Indians were proud about Sharma, the man received a lot of hate messages from angry Americans who said they wanted to send him back to India.

Facebook pages titled 'S&P US Downgrade' and '1,000,000+ Americans Mad As HELL DC Allowed a US Downgrade' got many likes with people posting comments and articles on it.