From THIS site, we get the following article:
EVEN though Standard and Poor's downgraded the US credit rating, Americans may be cheered by the examples of Australia and Canada, which both managed to restore their lost triple-A scores.
S&P revised the nation's rating downwards to a AA+ with a negative outlook, despite a push back from the White House which said the agency's analysis of the US economy was deeply flawed.While some nations have managed to climb back again to the top notch rating, others have found it extremely difficult to recover the coveted crown.
S&P removed Australia's AAA in 1986 and only gave it back 17 years later.
During that time Canberra adhered to strict budgetary discipline and even capped its debt in 1997.
It also benefited from rapid growth and a broad transformation of its economy, modernising its financial system and deregulating uncompetitive sectors. Meanwhile, demand from a resurgent China drove a boom in the Australian mining industry.
S&P took away Canada's AAA rating on debt denominated in foreign currencies in 1992.
But Ottawa recovered the grade in 2002 after reducing government spending as a fraction of GDP by more than 8 per cent, through a series of stringent spending cuts. (Canada's sovereign debt as denominated in Canadian dollars was never downgraded.)
S&P cut Japan's AAA rating in 2001, and since then the debt-ridden country has descended to AA-.
But Japan's borrowing costs did not rise immediately after the first cut -- suggesting a US downgrade might not be catastrophic.
Tokyo's lenders -- who are mainly domestic -- continue to buy its debt today even though Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio is a colossal 225.8 per cent, the largest of any country.
More recently, three European countries were in the AAA club before being booted out: Ireland from 2001 to 2009, Iceland from 2005 to 2008 and Spain from 2003 to 2010.
All three benefited from speculative real estate bubbles that swelled tax revenues, until the bubbles popped. Ireland, rated BBB+ by S&P, has not been able to tap credit markets since 2010. Iceland, at BBB-, successfully issued bonds only in June after three years of no access to commercial credit markets.
Madrid retains a respectable AA rating, but jitters in the bond markets over its debt load has sent the risk premium on Spanish bonds -- the extra return demanded by investors compared to safe-bet German debt -- to a euro-era record of 407 basis points. (end of article)
Z............pretty interesting stuff; and look what Australia and Canada had to do to get back into shape. Will we? Of course not. We've got people who won't listen to anybody but Geithner and Krugman!! What a joke.
z
