In interviews for an article The Observer published earlier this week about Standard & Poor's, one interviewee floated the idea that S&P downgraded the United States from AAA to AA+ to make future government investigations of the rating agency's role in the mortgage crisis appear retaliatory. While certainly plausible, this motive sounded a little Read More
Standard & Poor’s has been the butt of a few jokes on Wall Street lately. Most involve batteries and bra-cup sizes—things that, like U.S. government bonds, are measured in degrees of A’s. They are an indication of the derision that S.&P. has faced since making its bold decision to downgrade the credit rating on the United States of America from AAA to AA+. Read More
At 1:30 PM—half an hour after the scheduled time—President Barack Obama will kick off his press conference on Standard & Poor's Friday night downgrade of America's long term sovereign credit rating from AAA to AA+. Plenty's been said about this by plenty of people, except for this guy. We'll be taking notes, with Read More
Like so many industries, sentiment on Wall Street can be easily gauged through the reliable and elusive measure that is the nonsense its most foxhole-entrenched lieutenants send each other during the day. If you were ever curious as to how many of them truly view Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the S & P ratings downgrade, well... Read More
Rock-star analyst and Paris Hilton impersonator Meredith Whitney is gearing up to launch a credit ratings service that will compete with Standard & Poor's and Moody's, the Financial Times reports. Apparently she's found an opening in the market, after years of bad ink for the major ratings agencies over conflicts of interest and lazy, Read More
Ex-Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis does love writing
Fair warning: The most recent Standard & Poor's CMBS quarterly report, released Monday and titled "Delinquency Rate Is on the Verge of Passing Previous Peak," does not reveal the sort of optimism that seems to have fueled stock market rallies over the past two months.
The report, written by credit analysts Larry Kay and Read More
Here are some of the report's major conclusions, in brief:
Bloomberg Gets a AA
New York reached another positive milestone the other day: A major bond rater upgraded the city’s credit rating. That’s yet another sign that, thanks largely to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the city has put the days of high crime and fiscal irresponsibility well behind it. Standard & Poor’s, one of the three Read MoreIt's always interesting when a powerful institution takes a public look at itself. Last Sunday, The New York Times published a review of Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America's Most Important Newspaper, a book by journalist Laurel Leff, which details how The Times skirted the issue of the Holocaust during the early 1940's, Read More
From the beginning of his self-financed campaign for Mayor in 2001, it was clear that Michael Bloomberg was not accustomed to politics as usual. As a business leader, he was accustomed to accountability, to leadership and results. Throughout his first year in office, politics didn't change him. In fact, he changed politics. Now, he's doing Read More
If you want to understand where the stock market is today,
you might do well to ignore the endless stream of speculation pouring from the financial-news channels and look at something very basic, but thus far unremarked upon. The answer may be partly traced to the rising status in the public's mind of the Nasdaq as Read More
