S&P Downgrades Italy; Euro, Futures Tumble
As usual, a corrupt and pathetic Moody's continues to boldly not go where everyone else has gone before. Luckily, S&P, which had the balls to cut the US, has just done so to Europe's next domino, by downgrading Italy from A+ to A, outlook negative. Then again, this was pretty much telegraphed 100% earlier today as noted in "Italy Expected To Cut Growth Forecasts Further." Anyway, those incompetents from Moody's are next.
Full report:
Italy Unsolicited Ratings Lowered To 'A/A-1' On Weaker Growth Prospects, Uncertain Policy Environment; Outlook Negative
Overview
- Italy's net general government debt is the highest among 'A' rated sovereigns. We have revised our projections of Italy's net general government debt and now expect it to peak later and at a higher level than we previously anticipated.
- In our view, Italy's economic growth prospects are weakening and we expect that Italy's fragile governing coalition and policy differences within parliament will continue to limit the government's ability to respond decisively to domestic and external macroeconomic challenges.
- In our view, weaker economic growth performance will likely limit the effectiveness of Italy's revenue-led fiscal consolidation program.
- We have revised our base-case medium-term projections of real GDP growth to an annual average of 0.7% between 2011 to 2014, compared with our previous projection of 1.3% (see "Credit FAQ: Why We Revised The Outlook On Italy To Negative," published May 23, 2011). As part of our ratings analysis, we have also prepared upside and downside macroeconomic scenarios that could drive our future rating actions on Italy.
- We are lowering our long- and short-term unsolicited sovereign credit ratings on Italy to 'A/A-1' from 'A+/A-1+'.
- The negative outlook reflects our view of additional downside risks to public finances related to the trajectory of Italy's real and nominal GDP growth, and implementation risks of the government's fiscal consolidation program.
Rating Action
On Sept. 19, 2011, Standard & Poor's Ratings Services lowered its unsolicited long- and short-term sovereign credit ratings on the Republic of Italy to 'A/A-1' from 'A+/A-1+'. The outlook is negative. The transfer and convertibility assessment remains 'AAA', as it does for all members of the eurozone.
Rationale
The downgrade reflects our view of Italy's weakening economic growth prospects and our view that Italy's fragile governing coalition and policy differences within parliament will likely continue to limit the government's ability to respond decisively to the challenging domestic and external macroeconomic environment.
Under our recently updated sovereign ratings criteria, the "political" and "debt" scores were the primary contributors to the downgrade. The scores relating to the other elements of our methodology--economic structure, external, and monetary--did not contribute to the downgrade.
More subdued external demand, government austerity measures, and upward pressure on funding costs in both the public and private sectors will, in our opinion, likely result in weaker growth for the Italian economy compared with our May 2011 base-case expectations, when we revised the outlook to negative.
We believe the reduced pace of Italy's economic activity to date will make the government's revised fiscal targets difficult to achieve. Furthermore, what we view as the Italian government's tentative policy response to recent market pressures suggests continuing future political uncertainty about the means of addressing Italy's economic challenges.
In our opinion, the measures included in and the implementation timeline of Italy's National Reform Plan will likely do little to boost Italy's economic performance, particularly against the backdrop of tightening financial conditions and the government's fiscal austerity program (see "Italy Delivers", published by the Italian Ministry of the Economy and Finance at http://www.mef.gov.it/documenti/open.asp?idd=27880).
Our reduced expectations concerning Italy's growth prospects also reflect key structural impediments that we have written about before:
Low labor participation rates and tightly regulated labor and services markets;
What we consider to be an inefficient public sector; and
Relatively modest foreign investment inflows.
In our view, the authorities remain reluctant to tackle these issues (see our full analysis on Italy, published Dec. 1, 2010, on RatingsDirect on the Global Credit Portal). For example, we note that in the July 2011 political discussions about the Decree Law No. 98/2011 (converted into Law No. 111/2011), several proposed supply-side measures, including the liberalization of professional services, were shelved or delayed because of opposition within the governing coalition and in parliament.
The government projects that its fiscal consolidation program will result in a cumulative fiscal consolidation of about €60 billion, overall, with the largest savings projected in 2012 and 2013 (see "Italy Delivers", http://www.mef.gov.it/documenti/open.asp?idd=27880).
However, we think that the government's projection of a €60 billion savings may not come to fruition for three primary reasons:
First, as described below, we view Italy's economic growth prospects as weakening;
Second, nearly two-thirds of the projected budgetary savings in the crucial 2011-2014 period rely on revenue increases in a country already carrying a high tax burden; and
Third, market interest rates are anticipated to rise.
We have adopted a revised base-case macroeconomic scenario, which we view as consistent with the downgrade and negative outlook. Compared with the May 2011 base case, the revised base-case scenario assumes that annual real GDP growth will be 0.6 percentage points lower over the 2011-2014 forecast horizon because of more sluggish growth in exports, investment, and public- and private-sector consumption. Since May 2011, financial conditions in Italy have tightened and the pace of economic recovery of its principal global and eurozone trading partners has slowed. We also note that our revised base case is broadly similar to the downside (downgrade) scenario we published in May 2011.
We have also adopted a revised downside scenario, consistent with another possible downgrade. The revised downside assumes a mild recession takes hold next year, with real GDP declining by 0.6%, followed by a modest recovery in 2013-2014. The economic main drivers in our revised downside scenario are tighter financial conditions, with higher interest rates on government bonds, as well as weaker trajectories for private-sector consumption and exports.
We have also adopted a revised upside scenario, which, if it occurred, would be consistent with our view of a revision of the outlook to stable. Our revised upside scenario assumes that financial conditions will gradually improve, along with the trajectories for GDP growth, exports, and investment. For details of the revised base case and alternate scenarios, see our analysis on Italy, published Sept. 19, 2011.
Under all three scenarios, we expect that Italy's net general government debt burden will remain the key rating constraint for the foreseeable future. We project that such net debt will be 117% of GDP at year-end 2011, up from 100% of GDP in 2007.
Under our revised base case, the net debt burden would fall only slightly to 115% of GDP by 2014, a similar rate to the May 2011 downside scenario.
Our macroeconomic analysis also illustrates Italy's main credit weakness: Even under pressure, Italian political institutions, incumbent monopolies, public-sector workers, and public- and private-sector unions impede the government's ability to respond decisively to challenging economic conditions. For example, union opposition to the privatization of Alitalia in 2008 ended prospects for a takeover by Air France. Moreover, resistance in parliament in July 2011 led the government to drop proposals to liberalize professional services from its legislative agenda. Nontariff barriers to foreign direct investment (FDI) are, in our view, the key reason behind Italy's relatively low inbound FDI stock. At about 16% of GDP, it is less than one-half that of either France or Spain (36% and 43% of GDP, respectively) and lower than that of Germany (27%), despite Italy's potential efficiency gains from economic scale within Europe's common market.
With elections due in 2013, and the government's parliamentary position tenuous, it is unclear what can be done to break the deadlock between these political institutions and the government. As a result, we believe that Italy remains vulnerable to heightened fiscal, economic, and financial downside risks.
As noted above, the application of three elements of our recently updated sovereign ratings criteria--economic structure, external, and monetary--did not materially change our view from May 2011, when we revised the outlook on Italy to negative. We continue to score Italy as a high-income sovereign with a diversified economy and few external imbalances, albeit one with what we see as weak growth prospects.
In addition, we view both household and corporate balance sheets as relatively strong, which should enable the government to tap local savings on a scale that could permit a more gradual fiscal adjustment than for some of its southern European neighbors. As of year-end 2010, Italy's nonbank sector remains in a substantial net external creditor position, while the public sector's net external liability is equivalent to €804 billion (52% of GDP). We note that Italy's current account deficit has widened recently, to more than 10% of current account receipts, but we expect this to unwind.
We expect the government, given its tight fiscal position, will provide only limited direct assistance to the banking system in the near term, and we still expect most of the Tremonti bonds, which provided four banks' Tier I capital during the 2008-2009 recession, to be repaid this year.
Outlook
The negative outlook reflects Standard & Poor's view of risks to the Italian government's fiscal targets over 2011-2014, as well as the uncertainties on the timely implementation of growth-enhancing reforms. In our view, these risks would stem from weaker output growth than we currently assume in our revised base case. In addition, political gridlock could contribute to delayed policy responses to new macroeconomic challenges and result in significant fiscal slippage.
If one or more of these risks materializes, Italy's net general government debt could increase from its already high level. In that event, we could lower the long- and short-term ratings again. We could also lower the ratings if, against our expectations, the current account deficit remained higher than 10% of current account receipts beyond 2013. This would occur if Italy's trade balance did not improve or if the income deficits continued to widen because of rising refinancing costs.
On the other hand, if the government manages to gather political support for implementing growth-enhancing structural reforms, which in turn increase prospects for a material reduction in the net public debt burden in the medium term, we could affirm the ratings at the current level.
As is typical, ratings on issues and issuances dependent on these long- and short-term ratings may be revised as a result of today's rating action.
Futures not happy:
Neither is the Euro:
(12 votes)
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Oh, now its back to Italy as the focus shifts to the next Eurozone problem child? Whatever, this is just stupid, even a child can see the answer is to quit lying and just deal with your probems, but of course the most infantile are in charge in the insane Western World...anyway glad to see futures tanking.
DONKEY KONG BITCHEZ
Got Gold?
and Silver.
Don't be silly. Those AAA French bonds are obviously where to go!
That European debt analysis yesterday showed a huge gray arrow from Italy to France. France is totally exposed to massive Italian debt default.
Fuck the french
I think we will continue to see gold drop or stay rather horizontal for the short term as several (probably banks and large financials) try to gain paper capital to manuver. Once this is done, gold will trend up to the 2000 zone until the next crisis....the US or possibly Japan begin to break and the same pattern will repeat as gold wanders toward $3000. I doubt it will go much higher than that though...unless some major shitstorm occurs....WW3 for example.
Guess they are going to fire the new CEO?
Wow that's a lot of bullshit for saying YOU'RE FUCKIN BROKE!
The gives S&P at least a hint of respectability. Still, Italy belongs in the junk yard.
Arrividerci!
Greenshits!!!
Long Chianti, Monica Bellucci, Gold, and Mossberg.
Short US.gov.
Dude should see my new toy...dirty! Custom Rem 870 AOW 11" barrel for those doorway problems.
Remember Rule #4...double tap.
papa, one to CM for the knockdown, then double tap. Might surprise u w/ armor of some type.
U.S. Marine Corps Rules:
1. Be courteous to everyone, friendly to no one.
2. Decide to be aggressive enough, quickly enough.
3. Have a plan.
4. Have a back-up plan, because the first one probably won't work.
5. Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.
6. Do not attend a gunfight with a handgun whose caliber does not start with a "4."
7. Anything worth shooting is worth shooting twice. Ammo is cheap. Life is expensive.
8. Move away from your attacker. Distance is your friend. (Lateral & diagonal preferred.)
9. Use cover or concealment as much as possible.
10. Flank your adversary when possible. Protect yours.
11. Always cheat; always win. The only unfair fight is the one you lose.
12. In ten years nobody will remember the details of caliber, stance, or tactics. They will only remember who lived.
13. If you are not shooting, you should be communicating your intention to shoot.
Navy SEALS Rules:
1. Look very cool in sunglasses.
2. Kill every living thing within view.
3. Adjust speedo.
4. Check hair in mirror.
U.S. Army Rangers Rules:
1. Walk in 50 miles wearing 75 pound rucksack while starving.
2. Locate individuals requiring killing.
3. Request permission via radio from "Higher" to perform killing.
4. Curse bitterly when mission is aborted.
5. Walk out 50 miles wearing a 75 pound rucksack while starving.
U.S. Army Rules:
1. Select a new beret to wear.
2. Sew patches on right shoulder.
3. Change the color of beret you decide to wear.
US Air Force Rules:
1. Have a cocktail.
2. Adjust temperature on air-conditioner.
3. See what's on HBO.
4. Ask "what is a gunfight?"
5. Request more funding from Congress with a "killer" PowerPoint presentation.
6. Wine & dine 'key' Congressmen, invite DOD & defense industry executives.
7. Receive funding, set up new command and assemble assets.
8. Declare the assets "strategic" and never deploy them operationally.
9. Hurry to make 1345 tee-time.
US Navy Rules:
1. Go to Sea.
2. Drink Coffee.
3. Watch porn.
4. Deploy the Marines.
Semper Fi. Although the Navy watches porn more than drinking coffee, so switch those two. Everyone is into that red bull shit now, not coffee as much. Of course porn is endemic.
The Navy has only one rule for firefights:
Send the Marines.
Sounds entirely reasonable to me.
You guys might like: http://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Laws-Combat-Marion-Sturkey/dp/096508146X/r...
and "Bonnie Sue" and "Warrior Culture".
Esp. 'cuz the attack on the warrior culture is part of the attack on all fronts.
- Ned
LOL, this GREAT STUFF!
I never get tired of that.
Absolutely, this is what takes to make the greatest army.
The primary use of a sidearm is to fight your way to the nearest rifle.
I have a new toy too. Mine is the Kel-Tec PMR30 several video's on youtube...check it out. It truly is a toy but everyone who has shot it is in love with it. It attracts a lot of attention at the range!
Anger
Bargaining
Denial
Depression
Acceptance
It's show time!
The real 5 stages:
Denial
Denial
Denial
Oh shit!
Too late
I say we're getting close to denial #3.
Bernanke will not openly admit to QE3 this week. Our unemployment rate is high and despite their best efforts to manipulate inflation numbers down they are still above healthy levels. If he went ahead with another round of purchasing bonds given the current conditions it would be in complete defiance of the two bullshit mandates they came up with to jusitfy this scam. Considering that they are already under a great deal of scrutiny the backlash of publicly annoucing another round of quantitative easing would cast even more light on how this corrupt system operates leading to increased awareness by the sheeple. Instead, they will announce that they need to step back and let the market work itself out for awhile. But behind the scenes the Federal Reserve will be pumping the market up to keep it from crashing the minute they "step away." If they can gradually bring it down over a three month period then QE3 will be given the greenlight under the guise that the economy is "this" close to being able to walk on its own if only it had a little extra stimulus.
12:00 20Sep11 RTRS-A CHINA STATE BANK HAS STOPPED FX SWAPS WITH UBS, SOCIETE GENERALE, CREDIT AGRICOLE, BNP PARIBAS -SOURCES
.....move along, nothing to see here
Off topic but must see article. ....A big market-making state bank in China's onshore foreign exchange market has stopped foreign exchange forwards and swaps trading with several European banks due to the unfolding debt crisis in Europe, two sources told Reuters on Tuesday.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44588239
The European banks include French lenders Societe Generale [SOGN.PA 17.69 --- UNCH ], Credit Agricole [CAGR.PA 4.883 --- UNCH ] and BNP Paribas [BNPP.PA 26.65 --- UNCH ].
BOOM !!!
Last minute inventory of Beans, Bullets, and Bullion confirms I'm ready.
You have until December...massive crisis during winter is better...rioters don't like extreme cold.
"You know what can get us out of this mess? SOME INFLATION"
— Paul Krugman
hyperinflation, bitchez.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/19/when-inflation-was-good/
Inflation brought to us by aliens.
OMG Krugman was right!
You can still be right even if you are evil.
Oh no, Cramer had said the correction is over. Which could it be.
We had a 'correction'? When was that?
+1 Surely have not seen anything like captiulation with Cosmetics, AAPL and PSMT hitting the high list.
I always enjoy your comments.
Well done.
I think he meant erection.
The Viagra wore off...
It won't matter tomorrow.
So true. We've seen it all before.
Never seen a market so ready and willing to run headlong into certain disaster.
and now S&P will soon be hauled before the Hague to answer for their crimes against the Euro, same as it is being hauled to answer questions in front of the USA's Congress and various agencies.
Master of the obvious.....once again.
TPTB are just knockin' these countries down like clay pigeons....
So is the new S&P Chairman/CEO going to be fired or does that special appreciation apply to downgrading the US rating ?
After France downgrade. Thanks for the laugh
S&P: Welcome to the Italian 'No Fly List'.
Who they going to fire this time? S&P will only have janitors and aaa rubber stamps. There is a business model Warren could love
i hope the ES finally breaks...kinda tired of waiting
It will miraculously all be better by morning.
Quite possibly... until it's not.
And GOLD still doing nothing? Whatever..
Gold is only allowed to move during NY trading hours. Any price overnight price run-ups will be promptly reversed pre-market at 8:30 Eastern, and any overnight selloffs will be promptly bid up pre-market at the same time. Makes it harder for the hoi-poloi to capitalize on the big moves. But this is probably why the sell-off today - now they can tolerate a $30 crank tomorrow and price still hasn't moved relative to Friday's close.
Omerta Bitchez
Omerta also happens to be the first and second rule of fight club.
Whoever appeals to the law against his fellow man is either a fool or a coward. Whoever cannot take care of himself without that law is both. For a wounded man shall say to his assailant, "If I Die, You are forgiven. If I Live, I will kill you." Such is the Rule of Honor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo6mlxmla2w
Wow its really gonna be fun on Wednesday when The Bernank comes out and pulls a lump of coal out of his ass instead of the much predicted Golden Unicorn.
Depending on how long it was in his ass it might come out diamonds. But I'm no proctologist.
Could be, but Im not sure even The Bernank can generate enough heat and pressure in his ass to turn a lump of coal into a diamond.
Damn, that was funny!
dup - but BTW, IS there a proctologist around here who could confirm this?
I just handle delivery.
Damn it man!!!! that was a good Cab I was drinking!
Damn it, papa, that was a good Belhaven Scottish Ale I was drinking (the banker's malt).
9 years ago, on a golf session near Lago di Garda this tanned 5-week vacation-taking (commercial, likely) local banker told me while viewing the misty cultured Lombardy vista before us, "not so bad our quality of life, eh, better than America, eh?" I let him stew. Wonder if he's flippin' pizzas now.
Crazy as it seems i think you're right. Unless grease defaults first there is no way bernanke lubes up the markets before that shitstorm hits. It'll nullify any qe instantaneously. I think he's gonna wait to see if grease lights up the euro first so that he can judge the proper amount of lube necessary. Then he'llmstick it in... But it wont be just the tip!
Greasy grease?
LOL
long "Ben-Gay"...
with obama and the europeans...its more like Astro Glide!!
Take your pick: 850,000 psi for 4 days or 5 GPa (giga pascals) at 1,500 degrees Celsius, it takes only a couple of hours.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2007/0201-man_made_diamonds.htm
http://questional.com/31-much-pressure-time-take-transform-coal-into-dia...
But Ass-Coal has been priced in since 2009.
anything to keep king dollar best-of-worst class.
Sounds like as good a reason to dump a boatload of short gold contracts on the exchanges as any to me.
euro will be higher when US opens for trading :)
euro will be higher when US opens for trading :)
please downgrade spain
You mean like in 1898?
Reminds me of shooting my mothers cats - liked them but they were lazy and not that nice.
Make sure when you skin them to remove the feet, that way nobody can tell they aren't possums.
or 'coons
Panic Bitchez! Couldn't resist.
WOLF!!! wolf???
Too much noise from those MF agencies lately will somebody shut them down finally? Who the f* rely on those criminals opinion anyhow, after they rated mortgage junk in 2006-8 as AAA? Put them all in prison behind bars for 20 years alone with Madoff.
I was wondering WTF caused that spike in the dollar against just about everything....kept hitting refresh on ZH....finally.
Tyler...we're gonna be needing ZH radio because this shit is all happeing far faster than any one or ten human beings can type. (and yes...I know about the hook up with "Talking Forex" and it's fuckin great. Especially for me since I mainly trade forex.)
How about a live radio feed with music (a-la the Marla late night radio days) and it's interrupted by news? Come on./..we all know you've got plenty of free time:-)
Now there's a stock I'd invest in--ZH media. Only problem is, once the tylers sell this bitch to bloomberg it'll turn into just another cnbc, albeit with cooler tshirts.
for real TD could become a media empire and is only limited by his decision to do so.
Zerohedge twitter had a post right away on this, might want to monitor that as well
http://twitter.com/#!/zerohedge