Feed on
Posts
Comments

Coyote on how government solves problems:

This is hilarious, all the more so because the actors involved have absolutely no self-awareness of just how bad this looks

This week alone has seen a ratings downgrade for Spain as well as a threat by agencies to review France’s AAA status — and the markets have taken notice. Once again, it would seem, ratings agencies are making things difficult for European countries.

Now, the European Union is considering doing something about it.

European Internal Market Commissioner Michel Barnier is considering a move to ban the agencies from publishing outlook reports on EU countries entangled in a crisis, according to a report in Thursday’s issue of the Financial Times Deutschlandnewspaper

This is not even a content neutral ban on speech – it obviously will only be applied to bad reports, not positive ones.  No wonder Obama has always been so admiring of the Europeans.

It reminds me of the ethics of writing letters of recommendations these days, and of several other things that go on within the academy. Just sayin’ … not that I have any experience with it.

3 Responses to “Coyote on Navel Gazing”

  1. Speedmaster says:

    That’s like banning thermometers when it gets too cold, no?

  2. Harry says:

    That is hilarious, and Speedmaster’s comment is most pertinent.

    Not that I have ever been interested in French bonds, but how come they ever got a triple-A rating from anybody, unless the bonds were denominated in New Francs or Old Francs? During DeGaulle, Mitterand, or Leslie Caron and Maurice Chevalier? I never knew anyone who was ever interested in French bonds.

  3. Harry says:

    Just a month ago a Wells-Fargo was showing me Bank of America and Merril Lynch debt securities rated between Aa3 and Baa1, which yielded a full four percentage points above the credit of somewhat leveraged companies that actually sold a product.

    I asked the broker how come the big spread, inasmuch as I had never found any broker giving out free gold bricks, and his answer was, “Merrill Lynch or Bank of America aren’t going out of business soon, right?”

Leave a Reply to Harry