Viewing 22 posts - 1 through 22 (of 22 total)
  • "Excellent auction, AA1 ‹(•¿•)› .·:*¨¨*:·. .·:*¨¨*:·‹(•¿•)›"
  • allthepies
    Free Member

    Not quite AAA though.

    OOps.

    honeybadgerx
    Full Member

    The sky is falling! The sky is fall… Oh. Nope, everything’s just going to carry on as normal, perhaps even slightly better unless you’re in politics.

    aracer
    Free Member

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21554311

    Germany and Canada are the only major economies to currently have a top AAA rating.

    …though of course that isn’t actually true

    The ratings agency became the first to lower the UK from its highest rating, to Aa1.

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    brakes
    Free Member

    oh noes!

    footflaps
    Full Member

    Well I expect that will make half a percent of bugger all difference to anything…

    gordimhor
    Full Member

    George Osborne must be worried about his job now. Or is he so rich he couldn’t give a fig

    onehundredthidiot
    Full Member

    Can’t we just follow the american lead and sue ’em?

    Northwind
    Full Member

    They’be been flogging the line “We need to do X to retain or AAA rating otherwise CERTAIN DOOM” for a while, so it’s interesting from that point of view…

    Honestly I don’t quite understand why we haven’t got out the pitchforks and burned the ratings houses to the ground… Never mind why we still listen to a word they say. Their judgement’s been proved worthless- worse than worthless maybe since they played a big part in setting the scene for the financial crisis.

    To give a quick comparison of Moody’s financial acumen- they were still rating Greece as AAA til mid 2010.

    robgclarkson
    Free Member

    Quickly.. to the financial crisis bunker!!!! 😯

    aracer
    Free Member

    So everybody is a bit meh?

    CountZero
    Full Member

    I read somewhere that these credit ratings agencies aren’t official, they’ve just set themselves up and pretty much make it up as they go along, they’re not really part of any official banking group or agency.
    Could easily be wrong, it’s just something I heard or read somewhere.

    Northwind
    Full Member

    Yup, just independant private companies. There’s also no appeals process.

    Where that gets interesting is in corporate ratings- Standard and Poor handed out AAA ratings to huge tranches of collateralised debt, which is what fuelled the housing bubble and subsequent sub-prime collapse. The ratings turned out to be pure fantasy. And who paid for these false ratings? The institutions that were selling the debt packages!

    “How much is our debt worth?”
    “Debt? It’s worth bugger all!”
    “Really? What if we give you a bag of money?”
    “Then it is a AAA investment worth billions”

    “Hey, we bought this AAA investment that you said was worth billions. It turned out to be worth bugger all.”
    “So sue us. Oh no, you can’t! LOLZ. PS we are downgrading your country. But it’s all your fault”

    Matt24k
    Free Member

    Northwind has it in a nut shell.
    Ratings Agencies get a ZZZ rating from me unless they want to hand me a bag of money. Then, copying their business model, I’ll give them a AAA.

    thekingisdead
    Free Member

    George Osborne must be worried about his job now. Or is he so rich he couldn’t give a fig

    He’s definitely rich enough to care, that’s why he’s in politics, not on the board of a private company earning 10 times what he is now.

    I’m guessing when you’re rich it doesn’t matter what you earn from your day job 😀

    Edit: the point I’m trying to make, albeit badly, is that Gideon is so rich he probably only does a job he actually cares about (political musings about what a cr@p job he’s doing aside)

    gordimhor
    Full Member

    Am hearing that the coalition (and. Mr Osborne) are sticking to the plan as the alternative is much worse, at least that’s what Danny Alexander said this morning, but isn’t the plan in tatters now?

    gordimhor
    Full Member

    @ thekingisdead I accept your point just think that Mr Osborne is damaging his prospects of future employment, I am pretty sure he is damaging mine

    grum
    Free Member

    ‘We need to follow my austerity plan in order to keep our credit rating and not lose financial credibility’
    ‘The fact we’ve lost our AAA credit rating just shows how right I was’

    Hmmmmmm….. 😕

    ernie_lynch
    Free Member

    the coalition (and. Mr Osborne) are sticking to the plan as the alternative is much worse

    Yep :

    “Far from weakening our resolve to deliver our economic recovery plan, this decision redoubles it.”[/i] – George Osborne 2013

    That’s despite the fact that, according to George Osborne, the plan was designed specifically to avoid losing triple A rating.

    George Osborne in opposition in 2010 :

    Today, for the first time in our history, Britain’s credit rating is under threat.

    Indeed, some commentators think a downgrade is inevitable.

    That would mean higher interest rates on our national debt and throughout our economy could tip us back into recession, with more jobs lost and more businesses going under.

    That’s why our first Benchmark for Britain is to…

    …Cut the deficit more quickly to safeguard Britain’s credit rating.

    Conservative Party Website

    And it’s not just the Tories who have contradicted themselves as already mentioned the credit agencies have proved to have been equally clueless.

    Moody’s hails UK austerity effort

    “The UK’s top-ranked AAA credit rating is safe, thanks to the government’s austerity measures, according to the rating agency Moody’s.”

    Of course none of this should be seen as failure from this government’s perspective. The ideologically motivated cuts have, and will, contribute greatly to making ordinary people poorer and the super-rich even wealthier. So all in all a good job well done.

    ononeorange
    Full Member

    It seems then that this feeble-minded idiot has single-handedly caused the mother of all recessions, destroyed growth, still carried on increasing debt and now must be delighted to have damaged the UK’s interational standing. Still I suppose once he’s really destroyed the country he can go back to flogging wallpaper. What an a**e.

    Surely a contender for worst Chancellor of all time after Geoffrey Howe (who did sort of redeem himself a little by bringing down Thatcher)?

    aracer
    Free Member

    I don’t think you can really blame Gordon Brown for all of that, ononeorange.

    Though thanks for restoring my faith in STW, chaps – was getting a bit worried last night.

    unklehomered
    Free Member

    Insane how much wieght people give the ratings agencies. Same agencies had subprime products rated AAA, and Lehman brothers rated AAA days before they went bust. They don’t predict, they react.

    oldnpastit
    Full Member

    Surely a contender for worst Chancellor of all time after Geoffrey Howe (who did sort of redeem himself a little by bringing down Thatcher)?

    Oddly enough he was on Desert Island Discs on Radio 4 just after he got the job. He claimed to be a big fan of Geoffrey Howe and what he did in the eighties as Chancellor.

Viewing 22 posts - 1 through 22 (of 22 total)

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