• Tweet
• Share
• Email this.

Chinese Credit Rater Downgrades U.S. – MarketBeat

By Matt Phillips

Dagong Global Credit Rating Co., the Chinese rating company that was recently rejected in its bid to be an officially recognized bond rater in the U.S., just downgraded the entire U.S. The always objective Xinhua has the “scoop.”

The United States has lost its double-A credit rating with Dagong Global Credit Rating Co., Ltd., the first domestic rating agency in China, due to its new round of quantitative easing policy.

Dagong Global on Tuesday downgraded the local and foreign currency long-term sovereign credit rating of the U.S. by one level to A+ from previous AA with “negative” outlook.

The Chinese rating agency said the downgrade reflected the U.S.’s deteriorating debt repayment capability and drastic decline of the U.S. government’s intention of debt repayment.

“The serious defects in the U.S. economy will lead to long-term recession and fundamentally lower the national solvency,” Dagong said in a report.

The Chinese rating agency said the Federal Reserve’s new round of quantitative easing would further depreciate the U.S. dollar and was entirely counter to the interest of the creditors.

The Federal Reserve last week decided to buy 600 billion U.S. dollars of U.S. Treasury securities and other assets held by banks in a bid to inject fresh funds into the economy and bring down long-term interest rates.

“The credit crisis is far from over in the United States and the U.S. economy will be in a long-term recession,” Dagong Global warned in the report, adding a weakening greenback will cripple U.S. capability to attract dollar capital reflow.

Needless to say, the markets don’t find this credible. Bond yields haven’t done anything. As the Journal’s Joy Shaw reported, Dagong was little-known before it surprised the credit-rating world in July by publishing sovereign ratings for China that were higher than those for the U.S., the U.K., Japan and other major economies. The results differed from those issued by major credit-rating firms.

While we feel justified in giving Dagong’s neutrality the stink eye on this one, it’s not like Western credit ratings agencies have really distinguished themselves in recent years by slapping their good housekeeping AAA seal on some of the most toxic bond sludge Wall Street could concoct.

But as long as we’re looking to Communist state media for market update, we might as well point out one of our favorite pastimes here at MarketBeat, perusing the online pages of the Pyongyang Times. Here’s an insightful read on American culture published back in April. (Sadly, no link is available as the whole internet spirit doesn’t seem to have caught on so well in North Korea.):

The US is a society that is based on extreme individualism and governed by the law of the jungle.

In American society one can live only by way of racketeering, but without fraud and swindle one becomes a living dead who is denied even the elementary rights to food, clothing and housing. Nevertheless, the rulers trumpet about welfare and equality for all. This is the reality of corrupt American society.

In the US all sorts of crimes are rampant and the people’s vital and inviolable rights are exposed to constant threats.

The gunfires are plaguing the society like a malignant epidemic.

Rights to get job, to be fairly paid for the work done and to be provided with safe and hygienic working conditions exist in name only.

Although there are gaudy signboards of liberty, democracy and civilization in the US, a scrutiny into the reality shows that the socio-political and civil rights of most of the working people are grossly violated institutionally and the healthy development of the ideological and cultural fields is impeded due to the prevalence of social evils.

Sounds like some of the comments we got on our gold post. (We kid! We kid!)

via Wall Street Journal