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A Wall Street bond house raised California's credit ratings Wednesday, breaking the state's long-standing tie with hurricane-ravaged Louisiana for the worst credit marks in the nation. Standard & Poor's raised its rating on the state's general obligation bonds from "A" to "A+," and its rating on lease-supported debt from "A-" to "A." Standard & Poor's top bond rating is AAA. "The improvement being seen in California can be traced back to strong economic growth in almost all sectors and geographic regions of the state, as well as a spike in stock market and housing-related capital gains tax revenues," wrote Standard...

THE LEGACY COSTS OF DOING BUSINESSOn the back of both Ford [NYSE: F] and General Motors [NYSE: GM] having their credit ratings reduced to junk status this past week ? I thought it might be appropriate to take a closer look at why?Some would have us believe that North American automakers simply don’t build them like they used to! Well, being a proud owner of a 1980 Cutlass Supreme, with less than 100k original kilometers on the clock, I would concur with this line of thought. But then again, who really does build them the way they used to anyway? ...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - When he tried to refinance his home with a low-interest loan three years ago, Alan R. Sporn says he was turned down because Home Depot's repeated inquiries about his financial status had damaged his credit rating. Now it's likely he'll be able to pay off all his loans after an appeals court upheld a $930,000 damage judgment against Home Depot that, with interest, now stands at $1.15 million. ........snip......... After he was turned down for the loan on his Laguna Hills home, Sporn said he learned Home Depot had contacted credit agencies about his finances at...

LONDON, Dec 7 (Reuters) - The notion that rating agencies may one day downgrade the U.S. government's triple-A bond rating triggered financial market discussion on Tuesday about the previously unthinkable and added more pressure to the dollar. An article in the Wall Street Journal Europe said that analysts and investors had begun to "question the unquestionable" amid worries about budget and trade deficits and the weak dollar. The article made no suggestion that any downgrade was actually in the works from the big three ratings agencies -- Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch. But it cited a research note by...

<p>The state is facing an increasingly skeptical Wall Street as legislators fail to resolve a $38.2 billion budget deficit -- raising the prospect that Californians could pay millions of dollars in extra borrowing costs in the future.</p> <p>Unless a budget is passed, the state is expected to run out of cash in early September, a prospect that is raising alarms on Wall Street. Two major credit-rating agencies are reviewing the state's creditworthiness and could reduce it in the next two to three months if the legislature does not pass a budget that actually balances spending with revenue.</p>

State AAA credit worthiness on watch By MALCOLM JOHNSON The Associated Press 4/1/03 11:35 AM LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- The state has about 90 days to convince a major credit-rating company that it has its fiscal house in order and its high rating shouldn't be lowered, the state treasurer said Monday. "They're concerned about our game plan," Jay Rising said of the decision by Moody's Investors Service Inc. to place Michigan on a credit watch list. A spokesman for the Department of Treasury said Moody's is concerned about past Michigan budget practices, not the current proposed spending plan being debated...