From The Financial Times (of London) - Moody’s Investors Service fired off a warning on Wednesday that the triple A sovereign credit rating of the US would come under pressure unless economic growth was more robust than expected or tougher actions were taken to tackle the country’s budget deficit.
In other words, Nice country you have there, be a shame if anything happened to it.
lovely
Meanwhile 50% of the health bill is paid for by the government....yet....they cannot do the most obvious things...such as limit pharmaceuticals advertising budget and banning TV ads. The U.S. is getting screwed through the nose of costs in comparison to every other industrialized nation and they won't do a damn thing to confront those lobbyists.
But to me this pails as to what is on the line still to bail out the banks/housing.
On the other hand, Ritholtz has harped on the credit ratings agencies having way too much power (as we saw, this was the claim for the 100% CDS payout plus buying the CDOs OMG AIG might get downgraded!) and note they issue this report the evening the House raised the debt ceiling.
Even worse, the health care sector lobbyists tout jobs, i.e 1 in 6 jobs is in health care as the reason American should get so ripped off.
How quickly we forget
Moody's should have a credibility problem but we easily forget:
How Moody's sold its ratings - and sold out investors
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
RebelCapitalist.com - Financial Information for the Rest of Us.
Moody's? Seriously?
Honestly - wasn't Moody's one of the ratings agencies who gave all those securitized piles of mortgages AAA ratings, among many other fraudulent ratings that contributed to this mess?
Shouldn't they be under investigation for fraud and racketeering, instead of making pronouncements about the gov't that's been busy bailing water from the holes they helped poke in the boat?
Sigh.
Sovereign default
Has anyone covered the impact of Greece's potential sovereign default, the impact on the Euro, and ricochet effects on the U.S. economy, yet?
The Baseline article (and comments section) is one of the few places I've seen this addressed.
Is Tim Geithner Paying Attention To the Global Economy?
Moody's - credible or not - may be accurate this time.
you might if you have a mind
I actually emailed midtowng, since he has been tracking on this intensely to see if he wanted to do a post on it.
I don't know if he read it but I do know he writes up such detailed posts, I am sure each one takes hours to research and put together....but I don't know if he can get to this.
But you could as well and you're pretty detailed when you have a mind to be! It's clear the stock market was reacting to the possibility of contagion, all originating from Greece and possibly Spain.
But the probability of it...well, I think baseline scenario's post (I read it too) is about the best analysis of recent.
Thanks Robert
There were actually several Reuters articles on this today. Several official "reassuring" statements were made by the G7 this weekend regarding Portugal, Greece and Spain and the effects on the Euro.
If I have time tomorrow, I will pull them together. I can relay the reporting. I will leave the hardcore analysis to midtowng. ;)