Moody’s Threatens to Downgrade Italy

[Will69ease Profile]

Eurogroup chairman Jean-Claude Juncker warns that Greece’s economic crisis could soon affect Italy.

Credit rating agency Moody’s warned on Friday that it was thinking about lowering Italy’s Aa2 credit rating within the next 90 days, citing Greece’s continuing crisis as well as Italy’s internal problems as reasons for the downgrade. Last month, Standard & Poor’s also warned that it may cut Italy’s rating.

Head of the Eurogroup—the eurozone’s finance ministers—Jean-Claude Juncker warned on Saturday that the Greece crisis could affect Italy and Belgium, saying that “We are playing with fire.”

The crisis, Juncker said, could hurt, “due to their high levels of debt, Belgium and Italy, even before Spain.”

Neither of these nations is one of the troubled so-called “pigs” nations—Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain. The crisis could now be spreading beyond Europe’s most vulnerable nations. If it continues, even France’s credit worthiness could be in danger.

Share prices across the European Union came close to their lowest level for three months on June 20 as no solution to Greece’s problems emerged over the weekend. The main index for Milan’s stock exchange fell over 2 percent during midday trading the same day. Eurozone finance ministers insist that Greece must take more austerity measures before they make their final decision on whether to loan the nation another €12 billion.

“We’ve seen the reaction of the Greek public on tv over the weekend,” said Aegon Asset Management’s European head of trading, Adrian Fitzpatrick. “All the uncertainty is killing markets, and it’s killing volumes.”

Italy lacks some of the problems of other vulnerable nations—it doesn’t have the high unemployment of Spain, or the housing bubble. At 4 percent, its budget deficit is lower than France’s. But, as the Economist wrote in its latest cover article, “Italy’s economic illness is not the acute sort, but a chronic disease that slowly gnaws away at vitality.” Its economy is growing more slowly than any other nation on the planet—except Zimbabwe and Haiti. And it may not be running a large budget deficit, but the government’s debt is 120 percent of gross domestic product.

The worries about Italy and Belgium show that the euro crisis is far from over.

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[Will69ease Profile]

Why did you post that video on my thread freeyourmindnow?

[Freeyourmindnow Profile]

Why did you post that video on my thread freeyourmindnow?

maybe it is just a dutch thing but what i meant to say is that they all will fall like dominoes. as when one object in a line, by falling against the next object, causes it in turn to fall, and that second object causes a third to fall, etc This is the same for Europa