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Which countries have a higher credit rating than the US?

When Standard & Poor's downgraded the US from its AAA status to AA+ on Aug. 5, it knocked just one country off a lengthy list. Now, there are 18 nations with AAA credit ratings. Calculations of GDP and government gross debt are from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for 2010. The US had a GDP of about $14.6 trillion in 2010, the IMF estimates. Its debt, of about $13 trillion, is roughly 92 percent of its GDP. Data were not available for the small, AAA-rated sovereignties of Lichtenstein, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man.

And missing from the list? Some of the US's top economic competitors.

1. Australia

Tim Wimborne / Reuters / File
An television journalist looks at a display board shortly after the local market opened at the Australian Stock Exchange in Sydney August 5, 2011. Australian stocks sank over 4 percent in opening trade that day, after worries about European sovereign debt and weakness in the US economy hammered stock markets from Europe to Wall Street.

  • By Mary Helen Miller Correspondent

GDP: $1.2 trillion

Debt: $276 billion, or 22 percent of GDP

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