ratings agencies

The claims about “unsustainable deficits” gained new urgency this week as S&P warned that it was downgrading US federal government debt from stable to negative (see here for recent debate). This appeared to be a blatantly political…

As usual, NMA has a pretty funny animated version of the latest business news. This time it's on the S&P ratings downgrade. Take a look.

Given S&P's decision to downgrade the U.S. credit rating to outlook negative, it bears remembering how we got here. I think the key word is deleveraging.

The key takeaway from the S&P announcement is that the US has been put on notice, but no ratings action are likely until 2013. With no one expecting any serious progress on deficit reduction until after the 2012 election, S&P seems…

Moody's, the rating agency, has cut the credit rating for the Republic of Ireland two notches from Baa1 to Baa3, which is the lowest investment grade rating. They also left the outlook for further rate cuts as negative, meaning that more…

This comes via Market Watch: Moody’s Investors Service on Thursday lowered its view on China’s property sector, warning that a slowdown is underway with credit conditions forecast to tighten over the next 18 months. However, the…

If China does continue to tighten to fight inflation as I also indicated I expect they will, the hard landing scenario is definitely something to consider. Early evidence shows that the property bubble is coming off the boil. But it is…

S&P upgraded Indonesia’s rating by one notch to BB+, just one notch shy of investment grade. The move puts it on par with the other two agencies, and we think investment grade will be given by at least one of the big three agencies this…

In the wake of a sovereign debt ratings downgrade by the rating agency Moody's, Portuguese five-year bonds are trading with a yield of 10%. As a result, Portugal has leapt over Ireland into fourth place on the credit default swaps list of…

The results of the Irish stress tests are going to be released this afternoon at 430PM Irish time. I will be talking about the implications for investors in European markets on CNBC's Power Lunch show. I think one has to be cautious…