The Leader--Teh Won--Mr. Golf Weekend--has a call on Line One.
Standard & Poor’s cut its ratings outlook on the U.S. to negative from stable while keeping its Triple-A rating on the world’s largest economy. “More than two years after the beginning of the recent crisis, U.S. policymakers have still not agreed on how to reverse recent fiscal deterioration or address longer-term fiscal pressures,” said Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Nikola G. Swann
S&P doesn't respect speechification.
HT: Zippers
Have you been reading Monty's DOOM series over at Ace's? We're officially boned, and the S&P downgrade is hardly the worst of it even in today's briefing.
ReplyDeleteThe headline, "S&P Goes Negative on US Bonds", might as well read, "My Drunk Uncle Frank Downgrades US Bonds to BBB-".
ReplyDeleteThey both have the same impact on interest rates in the sovereign debt market.
Given what we know about S&P's calls on MBS, what's your drunken uncle Frank's phone number?
ReplyDeleteI'll take his ratings....
Ha! Me too.
ReplyDeleteOf course, Struppster, you know that Greek bonds are at 14.5% today, right?
ReplyDeleteAnd the deficit will jump by quite a pile of smackers if the US bond rate goes up only 1/4%, right?
I think heard Greek 2 year bonds are almost 20% actually. It would sure be nice to have an independant currency to devalue instead of letting the Germans (ECB same difference) destory the Greek economy with tighter monetary policy. Fortunately, we don't have that problem.
ReplyDeleteFWIW, here's an interesting read about interest rates and the cost of the Fed's policies:
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2011/04/interest_rate_r.html
Umnnnhhh....
ReplyDeleteFor the time being, QE2 is keeping USBond rates low. Very low, indeed.
That comes to an end (so we're told) around 7/1/11.