"Speaking on France-2 television, Finance Minister Francois Baroin confirmed that France had been lowered by one notch. That would mean a rating of AA+, the same rating the United States has had since S&P downgraded it last August. " http://www.stuff.co.nz/6257157/France-stripped-of-top-credit-rating So the rot continues...
It was not only France - it was a sweeping swipe, downgrading nine european countries... There are not many Euro countries left with an 'AAA'. Sooner or later Luxembourg will have to save us all (Bought a Nugget yesterday. Today, Gold fell 0.7%, but the Euro fell 1.1%, so I'm still in the greens. Or not? I don't know...)
These europeans are so stupid. Max Keiser already pointed out ages ago what they should do. The europeans need to set up their own rating agency, and then start downgrading all the american banks, etc. Presumably they'll only figure this out after everything has popped.
LOL - That'd be funny. Especially if their ratings agencies were honest. As an aside though. Who'd have thought that relinquishing seigniorage would have such serious consequences
http://www.google.com/hostednews/af...ocId=CNG.01fb6dc327a6394109c54439d2e4ab6c.191 As if anyone here at SS needed further evidence of the crass ignorance of these european "leaders". "incomprehensible"... To you ignorant fools maybe. But for myself and millions of others, it was fully in line with expectations. It is fully comprehensible (to us) you ignorant buffoon and it was fully expected Where on earth do they dig up these political twits? What cave have they been living in? Its no wonder that europe is sinking beneath the waves.
Too much hassle - just go by whatever the Chinese ratings agency Dagong is saying. They downgraded France a month ago. See: http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/08/france-rating-dagong-idUSL5E7N81QX20111208
Hopefully no-one here on SS doubted this :/ See what John Mauldin has written in his latest letter, posted in the last few hours. http://news.goldseek.com/MillenniumWaveAdvisors/1326740730.php He says, paragraph 2, "Who knew, other than the entire free world not watching reality TV, that S&P was planning to do such a thing?"
Just an aside: Yesterday I read about the plans for setting up an European rating agency: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_Berger_Strategy_Consultants#Projects_and_initiatives. Then S&P will also get it's "triple Z minus" (They seem to be planning to focus on country ratings, though...)
Who said "The rot continues"? As expected, Fitch followed S&P: Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...pain-belgium/2012/01/27/gIQAdREnVQ_story.html Apart from that, it seems that people are slowly realizing that all the bailouts so far had no real effect. During the Brussels meeting today, the other Euro countries urged Germany to provide more money in order to rescue Greece. The news said that the German government was "bugged" by these requests (an unusually clear wording...)
