The Euro

[Highlander]

[scot]

Very good

[Highlander]

Yes - I thought it a very clever merge of two topical news stories

[KKOB]

Who rates Standard & Poors ?

[Highlander]

I don't understand it KKOB the power these people is astonishing. They seem to be able to influence monetary ploicy in a country more than the elected government of that country.

[Ovacikpeedoff]

The rating agents must take a fair share of the blame for the financialmess that the world is in. Investmentsmade by banks are done on the basis of ratings provided by these agencies. The same agents that were giving American sub prime lending a AAA rating.

From personal exerience of dealing with these agencies it did not take much to get a AAA rating.

[FrankStanley]

are they taking the p..s?

[kenkay]

The Frogs and the Krauts then tell the rating agents that they should look at the UK [!] W*****S [!]

[Ovacikpeedoff]

The UK should not get too smug. If the Eurozone problems were to continue or even get worse the UK will almost certainly be downgraded as well. There is this impression that because we are not in the Euro that we are somehow exempt from the impact of the problems. We operate in a global market and whatever impacts on the largest trading block will also have a major impact on the UK.

By the end of this year unemployment could be in excess of 3 million people. If the Euro was to fail this figure would increase significantly more.  Rather than silly stupid point scoring countries should be working together to resolve this problem as quickly as possible.

[peter16]

Unfortunately OPD, people are operating/governing on the lines of political dogma and cheap points scoring:( sooner than what's good for the people of the country[!].