L'Osservatore rips Standard and Poor's on downgrading European debt
January 16, 2012
The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano criticized the credit-rating agency Standard and Poor’s for its decision to downgrade the bonds of nine European countries last week.
The decision from Standard and Poor’s came at a time when credit markets were beginning to recover from earlier worries, the Vatican newspaper claimed, in an article entitled “Suspicious Timing.” Although L’Osservatore Romano said that the decision to downgrade European bond ratings had been widely anticipated, took a conspiratorial tone, saying that the announcement showed “perfect and suspicious timing.” The article seemed to imply that Standard and Poor’s was deliberately acting to prolong a European economic crisis.
L’Osservatore Romano went on to question the accuracy of ratings by Standard and Poor’s and its competitors, saying that “even Beijing has raised doubts about the credibility of these rating agencies.” The credit-rating agencies have been denounced by other critics recently for their failure to anticipate the collapse of the markets in financial derivatives: a failure that helped to precipitate the economic collapse of 2008.
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