Ratings Agencies

Texas A&M Professor Irwin Horwitz was fed up with what he perceived to be disrespect and general incompetence on the part of his strategic management class so he did what many a college professor across the country has at one time or another dreamed of doing: he failed everyone.

"The gap would be made up with future tax hikes and/or cuts in spending. Those future taxes would be paid by successful millennials and their descendants, letting unsuccessful millennials off the hook," Bloomberg notes, bemoaning the likely "solution" to America's trillion dollar student debt bubble.

This may take you the entire weekend to digest, but if you are an unsecured creditor/lender (have a checking, savings or demand deposit account) to a euro zone bank, I would consider it your fiduciary responsibility to yourself to sit down and parse this piece with care and aplomb!

Moody's puts $3 billion in student debt-backed ABS on default watch leading us to wonder when 30% delinquency rates in a market where nearly $1.3 trillion in credit has been extended will finally result in the bursting of what is America's most spectacular debt bubble.

At the New York Fed’s evocatively named workshop, “Chapter 9 and Alternatives for Distressed Municipalities and States.”

Nestling idyllically between France and Spain in the foothills of the Pyrenees, Andorra - which has enjoyed the benefits of European borders without the restrictions of EU membership - has seen its risk "increase beyond our expectations," according to S&P. As a reminder, when Cyprus was "templated" and depositors awoke with a 47% haircut, its total financial assets to GDP was around 8x, Andorra is now at a stunning 17x. As The Telegrpah explains, in the last three weeks, the state has been gripped by a banking crisis that threatens to take it to the brink; and Andorra, which is not a member of the eurozone but uses the single currency on an informal basis, would have no way of bailing them out (with no central bank or lender of last resort). In short, the country faces a catastrophe if its banks fall apart.

Well that didn't take long. Russian Finance Minister Siluanov has responded to S&P's "junk" downgrade of The Russian Federation:

• *SILUANOV: S&P DOWNGRADE OF RUSSIA SHOWS 'EXCESSIVE PESSIMISM'
• *SILUANOV: NO REASON TO EXPECT `MASS' DEBT REDEMPTION REQUESTS

Adding in his statement that he "sees no reason to dramatize" the situation, Siluanov adds that the cut should not have any serious effect on Russia's capital markets. We assume by "dramatize," he means - they wil not be 'visiting' the local ratings agencies offices for a chat anytime soon.

On the heels of last week's downgrades by Fitch and Moody's to just above junk status, The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has issued a statement that it will no longer use credit ratings from Standard & Poor’s, Fitch, or Moody’s that were assigned after March 1, 2014. All credit ratings will now be at the discretion of the Board of Directors of the Bank as regulators assess whether or not the ratings made after March are accurate. Sounds like Spain, Greece, and USA's previous derision over ratings agencies proclamations is heading east.

Putting Things In Context ...

"...the American scheme of world domination through military aggression and unlimited money-printing is failing before our eyes. The public has no interest in any more “boots on the ground,” bombing campaigns do nothing to reign in militants that Americans themselves helped organize and equip, dollar hegemony is slipping away with each passing day, and the Federal Reserve is fresh out of magic bullets and faces a choice between crashing the stock market and crashing the bond market. In order to stop, or at least forestall this downward slide into financial/economic/political oblivion, the US must move quickly to undermine every competing economy in the world through whatever means it has left at its disposal, be it a bombing campaign, a revolution or a pandemic..."

This is where our economies are perverted. It’s the final excesses and steps of a broke society. It’s madness to the power of infinity. The only thing that’s certain is that in the end, your money will all be gone. That’s how Mario Draghi ‘saves’ the EU for a few more weeks, and that’s how the big boys of finance squeeze more from what little you have left (which is already much less than you think). A world headed for nowhere.

This one is almost too sensational to be real. Almost. Jon Corzine (of MF Global) walks the streets a free man. Yet FinCEN is wasting taxpayer resources sending undercover agents to entrap some offshore casino, and they act as if they’ve infiltrated a major terrorist organization. Amid all the debt, graft, and incompetence that’s so prevalent today in government, this is another sad testament to the direction that things are headed.

6 Years After the Financial Crisis Hit, The Big Banks Are Still Committing Massive Crimes

Capture, corruption, irreparable harm--and little hope for change.