To the editor:

It’s good to see the law of unintended consequences is still in effect. Although the tea party folks were unable to starve the government machine and its nefarious functions like Medicare, Social Security, food chain protection, infrastructure repair, environmental protection, education and research by blocking a raise in its debt limit, at least they were able to diminish its credit rating, which would lead investors to quit buying its bonds.

Instead, the bond rates decreased, making government borrowing cheaper, because investors realized that Congress is, and at least for the next 18 months will continue to be, dysfunctional and unable to do anything to help avoid a double dip recession and the safest place to park money is, you guessed it, U.S. Treasury bonds.

This was not terribly helpful for those of us with 401Ks and IRAs, and I’m not sure how pleased the billionaire hedge fund managers, whose 15 percent tax rate the Republicans went to the mat to protect, are today. While saving millions in taxes, they probably lost billions in income. Go figure.

At least the certain benefit of this tea party-led race to the bottom is that Obama will lose his re-election bid — or not. It’s good to see the law of unintended consequences is still in effect.