Links, mayhem on tape, updates on rating downgrades across the continent.
Video - EU leaders meeting in Brussels have agreed to set up a permanent mechanism to save Eurozone economies sinking in debt. They promised to do "whatever is required" to safeguard the common currency. And it may be needed soon, with rating agencies suggesting several nations are close to being insolvent.
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S&P gives Belgium credit rating warning amid political uncertainty
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RBS defies calls for bonus restraint
Investment bankers at the bailed-out Royal Bank of Scotland are in line to land £1billion in bonuses in defiance of increasingly frantic Government demands for restraint.
Business Secretary Vince Cable yesterday issued the first explicit threat from the Coalition of a new supertax on ‘scandalous’ City handouts.
It came amid mounting concern in Whitehall at plans by the leading banks to pay out a total of up to £7billion in the next few weeks.
Mr Cable threatened new transparency rules if the banks refused to put their own house in order – describing the bonus culture as a ‘poisonous fungus’ that has been allowed to flourish ‘in the dark’. He also said he wanted the biggest financial institutions broken up.
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European Nations Violating Deficit Caps May Face Fines Up to 0.5% of GDP
Euro-area governments may under European Commission proposals be fined as much as 0.5 percent of their countries’ gross domestic product if they ignore recommendations to fix economic imbalances, European Union President Herman Van Rompuy said.
The commission “will develop a number of indicators that show if a country gets into problems economically,” and “we’ll check that for the first time in March,” Van Rompuy said in an interview in Dutch on the television program “Buitenhof” today. Any country that ignores a recommendation to correct those problems will be punished “immediately,” he said.
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France's AAA Grade at Risk as Rating Cuts Spread
France risks losing its top AAA grade as Europe’s debt crisis prompts a wave of downgrades that threatens to engulf the region’s highest-rated borrowers, with Belgium also facing a possible cut, analysts and investors said.
Moody’s Investors Service said Dec. 15 it may lower Spain’s rating, citing “substantial funding requirements,” and slashed Ireland’s rating by five levels on Dec. 17. Standard & Poor’s is reviewing its assessments of Ireland, Portugal and Greece. Credit default swaps show it’s more expensive to insure Belgian, French and Austrian bonds than lower-rated securities from Chile and the Czech Republic.
“Every sovereign may get penalized in the year ahead,” said Toby Nangle, who helps oversee $46 billion as director of asset allocation at Baring Asset Management in London. “It would a big deal if France was to have its AAA rating stripped. I don’t think the likelihood of a downgrade is reflected in the market.”
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Moody's slashes Irish debt to 3 grades above junk
DUBLIN (AP) — Moody's slashed Ireland's credit rating five notches on Friday and warned of further downgrades if the country cannot regain command of its debts and tame its deficit.
Dietmar Hornung, the senior Ireland analyst for Moody's, said it remained an open question whether Ireland could sharply reduce its deficit from its eurozone-record levels while taking tens of billions from a new EU-IMF bailout fund.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/17/moodys-slashes-irish-debt-3-grades-above-junk/
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MADRID (MarketWatch) — Just days after a similar move for Spain, Moody’s Investors Service on Tuesday placed Portugal’s sovereign debt rating on review for a possible downgrade by a notch or two.
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/moodys-warns-on-portugal-just-days-after-spain-2010-12-21
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Heathrow the Nightmare before Christmas...
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