Credit rating agency Moody's Corporation reiterated on Monday that it may also decide to lower the US Debt Rating before 2013, unless the country takes significant steps to reign in it's spending and increase it's fiscal discipline. In order to maintain the "AAA" rating the US has held for the past 70 years, the rating agency stated that the ratio of debt to GDP of the United States should not exceed 75% by 2015 and should decline thereafter. According to Moody's, reaching a political agreement on further reductions in spending by early 2013 appears "difficult but not impossible." On Friday, Standard & Poor's downgraded the US Debt Rating from "AAA" to "AA +", in an unprecedented move for the United States, which some interpret as a signal of the decline of the US economy's unrivaled global hegemony over the past 2 decades.