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WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) -- Little is known about key details that led Standard & Poor's to downgrade U.S. debt late Friday, despite its outsized repurcussions. While the move knocking U.S. debt down a notch from the lofty AAA rating has exacerbated an already skittish stock market and drawn criticism from the White House, key details are a mystery. S&P doesn't say who, exactly, made the decision at the company; what kind of weight they gave U.S. politics versus ability to pay; or to what extent they felt pressured to downgrade the United States in response to criticism of its downgrades of...

Ratings agency Moody's repeated a warning on Monday it could downgrade the United States before 2013 if the fiscal or economic outlook weakens significantly, but said it saw the potential for a new debt agreement in Washington to cut the budget deficit before then. With U.S. markets still to open after rival Standard & Poor's stripped the United States of its AAA rating late on Friday, Moody's said in a statement its own decision to affirm the AAA rating on August 2 was on the condition that further cuts were found. "For the Aaa rating to remain in place, we...

A credit rating is an informed opinion. Nothing more. Nothing less. That helps explain why one major credit rating agency -- Standard & Poor's -- has downgraded the United States, while another -- Moody's (Symbol : MCO Loading... ) -- has chosen to affirm its credit rating with caveats. Both agencies had the same essential set of facts about U.S. debt: There's a lot of it now. There's a lot more of it to come. And there's very little in the way of actual policy today that looks likely to seriously change that outlook. Where the agencies differ, however, is...

RPT-UPDATE 1-Italy prosecutors seize Moody's, S&P documents Thu Aug 4, 2011 1:13pm EDT (Fixes dateline) * Magistrates probe "anomalous" share price moves * S&P, Moody's defend their work (adds Moody's comment paragraph 6) MILAN, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Italian prosecutors have seized documents at the offices of rating agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor's in a probe over suspected "anomalous" fluctuations in Italian share prices, a prosecutor said on Thursday. The measure is aimed at "verifying whether these agencies respect regulations as they carry out their work," Carlo Maria Capistro, who heads the prosecutors' office in the southern town of...

And so the war against the rating agencies is now official as a floundering Europe does anything in its power to scapegoat anyone and everyone, starting with its natural sworn enemy of course, the rating agencies. According to Reuters, "Italian prosecutors have seized documents at the offices of credit rating agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor's in a probe over Suspected "anomalous" Fluctuations in Italian share prices, a prosecutor said on Thursday." Ah yes, it is Moody's fault that Unicredit, Intesa, Fiat and pretty much all other Italian companies now close limit down at least once a day. Either way,...

Chinese credit-rating agency Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. again downgraded U.S. sovereign debt Wednesday and warned of further downgrades, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.... Dagong cut U.S. Treasurys to A from A+, with a negative outlook, saying growth in U.S. debt is still outpacing revenue growth. The latest move followed a Dongang downgrade of U.S. debt from AA to A+ in November, citing the launch of the Federal Reserve's second round of quantitative easing. "The agency said the approval to raise the debt ceiling indicated that there will not be any positive changes in factors that will influence the...

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Credit rating agency Moody's said Tuesday the United States will keep its sterling AAA credit rating for the time being, but lowered its outlook on U.S. debt to "negative."

(Reuters) - The United States' triple-A credit rating is likely to be affirmed by Moody's with a negative outlook, the ratings agency said on Friday, signaling that a downgrade would not come immediately, but possibly in the medium term.

<p>NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Amid the contentious debt ceiling debate, the United States is at risk of being booted out of a prestigious group of countries that boast a spotless credit rating.</p> <p>Only 17 countries in the world -- currently including the U.S. -- hold the highly coveted triple-A rating from both Standard & Poor's and Moody's. (S&P rates an additional three countries as triple-A, that aren't featured on Moody's list).</p>

To hear politicians, the fate of modern finance is now being decided by perhaps a dozen Manhattan bond geeks. Their job at Standard & Poor's and Moody's is to paste letter grades on governments so bond buyers can decide which are good for the money. Even America's president fears them. "A six-month extension of the debt ceiling might not be enough to avoid a credit downgrade," he warned the nation in an address Monday night, having already listed some of the consequences: "Interest rates would skyrocket on credit cards, on mortgages and on car loans." Given that Treasury bonds have...

WASHINGTON/LONDON (Reuters) - The United States will lose its top-notch AAA credit rating from at least one major rating agency, according to a Reuters poll that also found wrangling over the debt ceiling has already damaged the economy. A small majority of economists -- 30 out of 53 -- surveyed over the past two days said the United States will lose its AAA credit rating from one of the three big ratings agencies -- Standard & Poor's, Moody's or Fitch. Respondents saw a 20 percent chance of a new recession over the next year, a prospect that some economists say...

Tuesday, 26 July 2011 What the Ratings Agencies really do. Liars Lexicon - Support Uplift The news of the last week or so has been full of Ratings Agencies downgrading banks, bonds, debts and even entire nations. So now seems like a good moment to look at what it is the Ratings Agencies, Moodys, S&P and Fitch, actually rate? What do they consider in coming to their conclusions and can they be said to in any way be objective? What people like me used to think, if we ever considered the subject at all, was that the Ratings agencies looked at...

Officials from Standard & Poor’s and other credit rating agencies told a gathering of Republicans this week that a default on the nation’s debt by the federal government could lead to a “death spiral” in the bond market. We have enough tax revenue to make our interest payments so –not- increasing the debt ceiling shouldn't lead to a default on the interest payments. The significance of what has taken place in this incident is being misinterpreted. Pundits Bill O’Reilly, Kudlow, Charles Krauthammer and old guard Senators like James Coburn are championing the status quo. Krauthammer is contending that Republicans have...

The United States should do away with the debt ceiling altogether to bring greater certainty to investors in U.S. Treasury bonds, Moody’s suggested Monday. With the August 2 deadline for raising the debt ceiling barely more than two weeks away, the bond-rating agency issued a report Monday noting that the U.S. is one of just a few countries that has a statutory borrowing limit and saying that the limit creates “periodic uncertainty” for investors, Reuters reported. Moody’s threatened last week to downgrade the AAA rating of the U.S. government if it is unable to meet its debt obligations next month...

So the credit-rating agencies that helped to create the financial crisis that led to a deep recession are now warning that the U.S. could lose the AAA rating it has had since 1917. As painfully ironic as this is, there's no benefit in shooting the messengers. The real culprit is the U.S. political class, especially the President who has presided over this historic collapse of fiscal credibility. Moody's and the boys are citing the risk of a default on August 2 as the proximate reason for their warning. But Americans should understand that the debt ceiling is merely the trigger....

The ratings agencies — all-knowing, all-seeing, omniscient — have weighed in on the U.S. federal debt “crisis,” talking about downgrading U.S. paper in anticipation of a Beltway failure to cut a deal to raise the debt ceiling, thus engendering a “default.” Oh, please. Can anyone believe that the global capital market cannot distinguish between a Greek-type situation, in which the government literally cannot service its debts, and the U.S. condition, in which a political dispute might delay some interest payments for a few days? The question answers itself. More generally, has there ever — ever– been a case in which...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Moody's Investors Service jolted White House debt talks on Wednesday with a warning that the United States may lose its top credit rating in the coming weeks, piling pressure on Washington to lift its debt ceiling. Underscoring the effect a potential default would have on financial markets, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said if Washington failed to raise the U.S. borrowing limit in time, the United States would pay creditors first and stop benefits such as payments under the Social Security retirement program.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Moody's Investors Service said late Wednesday it placed the U.S. government's triple-A bond rating on review for possible downgrade due to rising risk of default. "The review of the U.S. government's bond rating is prompted by the possibility that the debt limit will not be raised in time to prevent a missed payment of interest or principal on outstanding bonds and notes. As such, there is a small but rising risk of a short-lived default," Moody's said. The rating agency stressed that it considers the probability of a default to be low but no longer minimal.

Moody's on Tuesday cut Portugal's credit standing to junk in the first such move by a ratings agency and warned the country may well need a second round of rescue funds before it can return to capital markets. Moody's Investors Service slashed Portugal's credit rating by four levels to Ba2, making it follow Greece into junk territory below investment grade. It cited heightened concerns that Portugal will not be able to fully achieve the deficit reduction and debt stabilization targets set out in its loan agreement with the European Union and International Monetary Fund. There also is an increasing probability...

<p>BEIJING (Reuters) - China's local government debt burden may be 3.5 trillion yuan ($540 billion) larger than auditors estimated, putting banks on the hook for deeper losses that could threaten their credit ratings, Moody's said on Tuesday.</p> <p>Addressing the estimate by China's state auditor that its local governments have chalked up 10.7 trillion yuan of debt, Moody's said it found more potential loans after accounting for discrepencies in figures given by various Chinese authorities.</p>