And the dominoes continue to fall (EuroCrisis Edition)

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The NY Times reports that S&P was whacking away with their hatchet today.  The summary
  • France has gone from AAA to AA+ (one notch)
  • Austria has gone from AAA to AA+ (one notch)
  • Italy has gone from A to BBB+ (two notches)
  • Portugal has gone from BBB- to BB (two notches, and is now junk)
  • Spain has gone from AA- to A (two notches)
What could make for some serious entertainment though, is that with France losing its AAA, it is quite likely that the EFSF (the "silver bullet" / "bailout fund" / "magic bottle containing confidence fairies") is probably also going to lose its AAA rating, and go to AA+.  Which is most certainly Not Good, since a pretty decent chunk of the Rube-Goldberg mechanisms that the Eurozone is planning on using to save the Euro/Greece/Italy/whoever is based on AAA ratings.

For bonus points, this probably is the death-knell for Sarkozy's electoral hopes - he essentially spent the entire duration of the euro-crisis (year?  two years?) telling everyone in France that the AAA rating was oh so crucial, etc., etc. and that he, the Master Financial Manager was going to preserve it.  Thats 0 for 2 in my books....

The full release is here...

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