Posted on 01/13/2012 2:25:57 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Standard & Poor's has officially cut the long-term credit rating of France and eight other Eurozone nations.
Italy, Portugal, Cyprus, and Spain saw two notch downgrades, while Austria, France, Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia were dropped one level.
The ratings agency reiterated its ratings on Belgium, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands.
Standard & Poor's has taken all 16 nations off of CreditWatch, which indicates a coming adjustment. However, the company has left 14 of the countries, including Italy and France, on negative outlook. Slovakia and Germany were the only two to move to stable outlooks.
The move by S&P ultimately stripped two countries, France and Austria, of cherished AAA ratings. Today, only four nations — Germany, Finand, the Netherlands and Luxembourg — maintain AAA status.
France's decline, from AAA to AA+ also substantially endangers the credit rating of the European Financial Stability Facility.
Whispers of the downgrades today sent the euro on a race lower, where it touched a 16-month low against the dollar. The currency is currently down more than 1.1% to $1.2675.
Full announcement:
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In our view, the policy initiatives taken by European policymakers in recent weeks may be insufficient to fully address ongoing systemic stresses in the eurozone.
We are lowering our long-term ratings on nine eurozone sovereigns and affirming the ratings on seven.
The outlooks on our ratings on all but two of the 16 eurozone sovereigns are negative. The ratings on all 16 sovereigns have been removed from CreditWatch, where they were placed with negative implications on Dec. 5, 2011 (except for Cyprus, which was first placed on CreditWatch on Aug. 12, 2011).
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Well, the ‘big three’ are in trouble. They could be downgraded too.
All of them posted massive deficits last year. Certainly, nothing like in the US, but things are bad.
So we shall see.
When we gut our military the reasons foreigners buy our debt (oil in dollars for just one example) will disappear.
And to accelerate our downfall we’ll gut the military to free more money for welfare programs...
I was kidding, yet I see Spain and Italy yields fell today!
foreigners are no longer buying our debt, just the Fed. Although I have heard the Treasury is going to try and sell some debt backed by US real estate. We'll see how that goes.
“This is the end / Beautiful friend / This is the end / My only friend, the end / Of our elaborate plans, the end / Of everything that stands, the end”
Thank you Jim Morrison and the Doors.
Funny how the song almost parallels what was(is) going on in Europe and here. We are facing the end I suspect. Just when??
That should be good for a 300 point rally come Monday.
Nope, the Dow won’t budge on Monday.
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