"The European debt crisis has just gone to an entirely new level. Just when it
seemed like things may be stabilizing somewhat, we get news of huge financial
bombs being dropped all over Europe. Very shortly after U.S. financial markets
closed on Friday, S&P announced credit downgrades for nine European
nations. This included both France and Austria losing their cherished AAA
credit ratings. When the credit rating of a country gets slashed, that is a
signal to investors that they should start demanding higher interest rates when
they invest in the debt of that nation. Over the past year it has become
significantly more expensive for many European nations to borrow money, and
these new credit downgrades certainly are certainly not going to help matters.
Quite a few financially troubled nations in Europe are very dependent on the
ability to borrow huge piles of cheap money, and as debt becomes more expensive
that is going to push many of them over the edge. Yesterday I wrote about 22
signs that we are on the verge of a devastating global recession, and
unfortunately that list just got a whole lot longer.
Over the past several months we have seen quite a few credit downgrades all over Europe, but we have never seen anything quite like what S&P just did. Standard & Poor’s unleashed a barrage of credit downgrades on Friday....
-France was downgraded from AAA to AA+
-Austria was downgraded from AAA to AA+
-Italy was downgraded two more levels from A to BBB+
-Spain was downgraded two more levels
-Portugal was downgraded two more levels
-Cyprus was downgraded two more levels
-Malta was downgraded one level
-Slovakia was downgraded one level
-Slovenia was downgraded one level
This is really bad news for anyone that was hoping that things in Europe would start to get better. Borrowing costs for many of these financially troubled nations are going to go even higher.
In addition, there was another really, really troubling piece of news that came out of Europe on Friday.
It was announced that negotiations between the Greek government and private holders of Greek debt have broken down..."
at http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/bam-bam-bam-huge-financial-bombs-just-got-dropped-all-over-europe
Over the past several months we have seen quite a few credit downgrades all over Europe, but we have never seen anything quite like what S&P just did. Standard & Poor’s unleashed a barrage of credit downgrades on Friday....
-France was downgraded from AAA to AA+
-Austria was downgraded from AAA to AA+
-Italy was downgraded two more levels from A to BBB+
-Spain was downgraded two more levels
-Portugal was downgraded two more levels
-Cyprus was downgraded two more levels
-Malta was downgraded one level
-Slovakia was downgraded one level
-Slovenia was downgraded one level
This is really bad news for anyone that was hoping that things in Europe would start to get better. Borrowing costs for many of these financially troubled nations are going to go even higher.
In addition, there was another really, really troubling piece of news that came out of Europe on Friday.
It was announced that negotiations between the Greek government and private holders of Greek debt have broken down..."
at http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/bam-bam-bam-huge-financial-bombs-just-got-dropped-all-over-europe
