Tuesday 6 December 2011

The five reasons why S&P put the Eurozone on a downgrade watch

Standard and Poors have warned the European leaders that it might downgrade eurozone sovereign debt.   The credit rating agency listed five solid reasons for their decision.
  1. Tightening credit conditions across the eurozone;
  2. Markedly higher risk premiums on a growing number of eurozone sovereigns, including some that are currently rated 'AAA';
  3. Continuing disagreements among European policy makers on how to tackle the debt crisis;
  4. High levels of government and household indebtedness across a large area of the eurozone;
  5. The rising risk of economic recession in the eurozone as a whole in 2012.
The EC recently published proposals to restrict the activities of credit rating agencies. Presumably, it is to prevent them from speaking the truth, like S&P did today, about the appalling debt crisis that now threatens to consume Europe.

If you don't like the message, gag the messenger.

5 comments:

Fox said...

It is depressing how freedom of speech has been eroded in Europe. Widely interpreted "anti-hate" laws means that we can't have a serious discussion about immigration. The Euro-fascists now want to silence credit rating agencies.

DaveP said...

1. The ratings agencies are based in the US.
2. The US Dollar has big, if not bigger, structural problems than the Euro.

So perhaps the EU might be justified in thinking that the US rating agencies are downgrading EU debt, not because its the correct analysis, but because they are trying to protect the US Dollar.

And if you peal back the onion layers, you might also want to read the PNAC documents.

Stevie b. said...

Alice - I'd be curious to know your response to DaveP.

The only non-US agency I'm aware of is Dagong, but surely that's going from the proverbial frying-pan etc.

Is it all meaningless anyway? Should we just assume the whole developed world is B- until we eventually reach an inevitable globally-level playing-field after 30 years of Western living-beyond-our-means unreality?

Stevie b. said...

"If you don't like the message, gag the messenger"

Maybe it's a waste of a gag....

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/12/do-ratings-agencies-still-matter/

...or maybe the Ratings Agencies have learnt their lessons from the past and are now finally on the ball.

dearieme said...

Ah, DaveP, but you now need to explain why they downrated the USA.