barron's negatief (2) maar Goldilocks is terug

In tegenstelling tot wat hoofdartikel Barron's suggereert, gaan de rating agencies de schulden van gemeeentes (muni's) etc upgraden.
Het EU plan om Griekenland te helpen (met als gevolg dat de rating bureaus Griekenland weghaalden van de credit watch negative watch (=downgrade kan ek moment komen) naar outook negative (=downgrade allen als er nieuw slecht nieuws komt, kan nog hele tijd duen of helemaal niet komen) hielp de muni's ook al.
De kommer en kwel die over ons uitgestort wordt over de kredietwaardigheid van de Amerikaanse overheden is overdreven.

De Financial Times meldde vandaag:
Moody’s to change US muni ratings
Moody’s, the US ratings agency, is making the biggest changes to the way it rates US municipalities for almost a century, in a move that could lower financing costs for state and local governments over time. The move brings munis into line with the way Moody’s rates corporate and other bonds and follows criticism that municipalities have been held to a higher standard than corporations in spite of having lower default rates. About 70,000 ratings will be subject to the changes, which represent a shift from the scale that Moody’s has used to assess the risk of munis since 1918…Moody’s expects an upward shift in state and local government long-term muni ratings by up to three notches. It says the moves represent a shift from one scale to another rather than a change in its opinion of credit quality. “We are responding to the evolving needs of the market for greater comparability between the ratings of these obligations and those issued by other entities, such as corporations,” said Gail Sussman, managing director in the US public finance group at Moody’s. The shift is expected to lower borrowing costs for muni issuers, but the effect may not come immediately due to the current state of the market and economy, analysts and investors said.