S&P downgrades euro bailout fund from AAA - (karma: 2)en>frfr>en By Dewi_Sant Comments: 22884, member since Wed Jul 06, 2005
On Tue Jan 17, 2012 05:24 PM
S&P downgrades euro bailout fund from AAA; - Finnish Foreign Minister slams new fiscal pact as “unnecessary and harmful” - As expected S&P last night downgraded the EFSF, the eurozone’s bailout fund, from AAA to AA+. The move is likely to lead to higher borrowing costs for the fund which will feed through to higher rates on any loans it pays out, reducing its effectiveness. Both France and Germany have reiterated that the lending capacity of the EFSF remains intact. S&P said it could boost the EFSF’s rating if countries put up more loan guarantees.
Negotiations on the Greek voluntary restructuring continued to be deadlocked yesterday, with the private bondholders saying they may not return to the table tomorrow as scheduled unless further “clarification” was given on the level of interest rates to be charged on the new bonds. ECB President Mario Draghi said that the Greek debt sustainability analysis "needs to be clarified [to see] whether it's realistic." In the FT, Iannis Mourmouras, Greece’s Deputy Finance Minister, argues, “Austerity has not been the answer for Greeks. We cannot sustain it. This is the lesson of the last year. All in the eurozone should heed it.”
The FTD reports that discussions are taking place in the ECB Governing Council over how to deal with losses on the ECB’s holdings of Greek debt if the country defaults or undertakes a forced restructuring. Boersen-Zeitung reports that Bundesbank board member Carl-Ludwig Thiele has said that the ECB’s purchases of government bonds are illegal, marking the first time a member of the Bundesbank has questioned the legality of the purchases. The ECB’s former chief economist Juergen Stark has written a letter to his former employers critising their handling of the crisis.
Meanwhile, Finnish Foreign Minister Erkki Tuomioja has slammed the new European fiscal pact, saying “the whole compact is at best unnecessary and at worst harmful, and Finland has reason to oppose the whole treaty and at least remain outside it,” adding “the majority of [the Finnish] parliament has the same view as I do”.
Wolfgang Reitzle, CEO of the a large industrial and engineering firm, Linde Group, became the first head of a DAX listed company to publicly call for Germany to consider leaving the euro if efforts to impose fiscal discipline and reforms on indebted countries fail.
FT CityAM WSJ European Voice BBC Independent Guardian Irish Independent Telegraph Times Irish Times FT 2 CityAM 2 WSJ 2 IHT FT 3 CityAM 3 WSJ 3 Süddeutsche Les Echos WSJ 4 FT 4 FT 5 WSJ 5 FT 6 Irish Times 2 Telegraph 2 Le Monde Le Figaro Le Monde 2 Nouvel Observateur Boersen-Zeitung Spiegel Handelsblatt Bloomberg Spiegel Reuters Spiegel 2 BBC: Hewitt BBC: Peston BBC: Peston BBC: Flanders Telegraph: Editorial Telegraph: Osborne Telegraph: Warner Times: Manolopoulos FT: King FT: Editorial FT: Rachman FT: Beattie FT: Mourmouras City AM: Heath WSJ: Heard on the Street WSJ: Review & Outlook Süddeutsche: Kläsgen Welt: Schiltz EUobserver EUobserver 2
re: S&P downgrades euro bailout fund from AAA - (karma: 1)en>frfr>en By VAVD Comments: 2680, member since Wed Nov 25, 2009
On Tue Jan 17, 2012 08:03 PM
simplefrench wrote:
and you are a stinking american.
And you are arguably the most stupid mammal I've ever met. I hope your life is nasty, cold, brutish and short. And, if the recent news is any indication, I'll soon be delighted to see that my wishes are granted.
