Standard & Poor's ratings agency has downgraded France's credit rating, French television channels reported on Friday, citing a government source.

I take the news with a grain of salt. France should have been downgraded a while ago along with others but it hasn't. Is Japan still AAA? Rating agencies are highly politicized, they push governments into taking decisions quickly via downgrades. Hardly any consistencies in their downgrades...

Austria downgraded too

Greek debt talks collapsed today

Time to go in the bomb shelter & drink wine until Spring

Everybody should get downgraded except for Liechtenstein and or Norway maybe.

The bunker's calling...

That's what happens when you don't do your homework and prop up the Euro with money that your budget simply doesn't have.

Domino theory anyone?

So you'll just be downstairs in the basement then, will you?

Correct - Hic!

Faber says S&P was too shy.

Most European countries should be junk:

Like this cartoon



and this montage

This time Moody's warning for France and UK:

Ratings agency Moody’s Investor Service on Monday 13 Feb. downgraded its credit ratings on Italy, Portugal and Spain, while France, Britain and Austria kept their top ratings but had their outlooks dropped to “negative” from “stable.”

rating of sovereign debt is silly unless the pricing of the debt is tied to the rating. and unless pricing is tied to the rating, a downgrade event is a non-event. in the absence of any pricing impact, the rating is generally irrelevant to market decisions about whether or not to buy sovereign debt, e.g. US treasuries.

I would be a big fan of simply shutting down the ratings agencies altogether. most buyers of debt (sovereign or otherwise) are sophisticated enough to make their own assessment of risk relative to return, and the ratings agencies are generally nothing more than shills for the banking industry, anyway.

About "I would be a big fan of simply shutting down the ratings agencies altogether"

They are companies providing a service to their customers so it is incorrect to write "most buyers of debt (sovereign or otherwise) are sophisticated enough to make their own assessment of risk relative to return"
These buyers are their customers; who else would be interested in this service?
If you want to shut them down because you think they provide a poor service then you might as well proposing most service companies

the banks don't need the service, they only use the ratings agencies as a tool to create the illusion that somehow debt pricing is tied to "objective criteria". I still haven't figured out why the agencies bother with sovereign debt, though, the markets largely ignore the ratings anyway.