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S&P Rating Agency Delegation Vists Greeks Bearing Gifts
It appears all it takes these days to get invited for some free ouzo and a little sirtaki is to issue a note that one's minions are about to downgrade Greece. This is precisely what has happened to analysts from S&P, which last week announced it was looking at notching Greece closer to junk status (currently BBB+). Market News, quoting Greek officials who apparently have a rumor retention span of about 2 seconds before they blast anything and everything to their entire rolodex, reports that "a team from ratings agency Standard & Poors is on its way to Athens for talks Tuesday with government officials about the country's economy and ongoing efforts to reduce its public sector budget deficit." Not too surprisingly, S&P had no comment by how much it would upgrade Greece following this gift reception ceremony.
More from Market News:
The Greek sources said officials in Athens were initially reluctant to receive the S&P team this week. They preferred to wait until after March 16, when EU finance ministers are scheduled to meet in Brussels and render their judgement on Greece's deficit-cutting efforts -- including new measures the government has announced recently in addition to its original "Stability and Growth" plan.
The sources said the Greek government believes there will be a clearer picture on Greek budget figures for the first quarter after March 16.
But according to these sources, S&P said it planned to publish a new assessment of Greece before March 16, whether or not its team was received in Athens. At that point, the decision was made to allow the S&P team to come this week, the sources said.
We expect Fitch to be on the next Greece sponsored G-V flight out of Tetherboro. And keeping up with the parlance of our times, mile high bottle and hostess service is now called "damage control."
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Perhaps I'm incorrectly interpreting your irony -that's what you get with worldwide audiences- but do you seriously expect any rating agency to upgrade Greece?
I also am considering downgrading Greek debt down to WTF++. Where's my trip to Greece for some of that ouzo?
The way out is that they HAVE to upgrade Greece at some point. I don't know if they WILL. But to see a plan like, cut the expenses, let the poor die, and we'll restore your credit rating, and you'll borrow cheaper.. Then maybe you can start social spending a little more.
Except it never works out like that. You cut social spending, it never comes back. People needlessly suffer. The banks continue their collecting payments on their fraudulent debt.
Who wins? The banks. Who loses? Everyone else.
Plus seeing how rigged the game is, perhaps they were just taking a stab at something ridiculous the banksters and company will do.
Of course Greece and any country could set social spending to 0 and this economic tsunami we're still experiencing and only increasing, will still crash and burn. In the future they can say, 'What did we live by austerity for?' NOTHING!
There isn't much data to support what happens when you remove social spending. And that's the problem: nobody dares cancel entitlements. So, if the entitlement is poorly thought out and burdensome, or economically unfeasible, as most of them are, they have an uncanny knack of making great numbers of people dependent long before the mushrooming structure shows stress fractures.
That makes the collapse not only imminent, it makes the people suffer far greater than if the government had done nothing to begin with.
This from the same agencies that rated MBSs AAA+++++++? Why is their credibility not zero?
For a purportedly objective, data-driven ratings agency, a junket to Greece looks bad.
For Greece's part, they have a dilemma. If they tell the world the truth about how bad it really is, nobody will buy their bonds.
If they obfuscate, then they have to sleep their way to a better rating. That will be seen as compromising, and nobody will buy their bonds.
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