it's widely recognised that moody's, s&p's, fitch.. were, in-part, to blame for the credit crunch due to rating junk debt incorrectly. we can't really start digging them out for grading ailing countries debt as junk. the significance of credit rating agencies cannot be underestimated.
today portugal raised money, albeit at a higher price:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...elow-3-percent-after-portugal-rating-cut.html
my thoughts:
we will have this kind of saga with various other european countries for the next 2 years or so, so get used to it. i don't know what the future holds for the euro, but the credibility of a single currency has been hammered and won't recover for a long time.
in terms of global markets, remarkably our main index the ftse 100 has recovered to above 6000 points on the back of a greek bailout, with the dow doing the same. this won't last. volatility will be the order of the day for some time yet, volumes are at record low levels and investors are scared. you could argue the case that 'every bull run climbs a wall of fear', but we are running out of steam and there are far too many banana skins for my liking. most equities look overbought at these levels - the greek's weren't the only reason we had 7 straight weeks of losses!
on top of the eurozone problems, we have china raising interest rates to calm inflationary pressures. this is important and another factor weighing on sentiment due to the size and growth of the country.
ecb and boe rate decision tomorrow. euro plus 25 basis points, we won't change.
us nfp's on friday.
let's see where we are after that lot.
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