Hey look, even wealthy countries can suffer creditworthiness-threatening...
Moody’s announced on Tuesday that it’s reviewing its sovereign credit ratings methodology, and seeking comment from industry participants. The review comes probably not a moment too soon — and we are...
View Article‘This downgrade is nonsense!’
That’s the considered opinion of Julian D. A. Wiseman (most recently head of UK rates strategy at Société Générale but writing on his personal blog here) on the Monday after Moody’s cut its credit...
View ArticleIt’s never fun being the little guy
Just as your risk of a dodgy bailout is determined by your size so too, perchance, is your risk of an odd ratings action. On Tuesday Slovenia’s credit rating was junked by Moody’s, forcing it to call...
View ArticleSubprime securities – still being downgraded
If you woke up on June 10, 2013 and thought the subprime securities crisis was behind us, well, you were wrong. Some two weeks ago Moody’s announced it was downgrading 28 tranches of various bonds (as...
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ESMA: ‘Get the raters!’
You might expect an EU-sponsored investigation into the sovereign ratings process as practiced by Moody’s, S&P and Fitch to be coloured, politically. But that would be casting aspersions on the...
View ArticleHome is where the heart is, sovereign rating edition
To the many sticks used to bash the credit rating agencies for their role in the (near) downfall of the financial system, we can now add a new one: home bias. The complaint comes with academic...
View ArticleSovereign rating bias, a clanging gauntlet lands [Update]
We’ve featured one study that claimed to find bias in sovereign ratings, written in the measured tones of academia, which was enough to set off some tit-for-tatting between S&P and the authors....
View ArticleRaters’ sovereign bias, a new rebuke
Another salvo arrives in the intellectual spat over whether or not credit rating agency opinions have been subject to country bias, possibly influencing Europe’s debt crisis. After we featured a...
View ArticleCredit beauty, in the eye of the beholder
Last month Fitch Ratings, controlled by the American mass media conglomerate Hearst Corporation, sought to amplify sanctimonious Western sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s Russia by placing a...
View ArticleMoody’s changes Glencore outlook to negative
Remember the days when investment bank credit-rating changes used to be top of the financial news agenda? And then the days when sovereign credit-rating changes were? Well, today, it’s all about...
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