Moody's Downgrades The UK From AAA To Aa1

Its friday night the markets are closed for the weekend so..............

Moody's downgrades UK's government bond rating to Aa1 from Aaa; outlook is now stable

London, 22 February 2013 -- Moody's Investors Service has today downgraded the domestic- and foreign-currency government bond ratings of the United Kingdom by one notch to Aa1 from Aaa. The outlook on the ratings is now stable. The key interrelated drivers of today's action are:

1. The continuing weakness in the UK's medium-term growth outlook, with a period of sluggish growth which Moody's now expects will extend into the second half of the decade;

2. The challenges that subdued medium-term growth prospects pose to the government's fiscal consolidation programme, which will now extend well into the next parliament;

3. And, as a consequence of the UK's high and rising debt burden, a deterioration in the shock-absorption capacity of the government's balance sheet, which is unlikely to reverse before 2016.

Zerohedge

Now lets see if our beloved goverment use's this as a excuse for more austerity.

Quick edit.

Osborne just did a statment on the downgrade.

The Chancellor George Osborne released the following statement after the UK lost its AAA credit rating with agency Moody's:

Tonight we have a stark reminder of the debt problems facing our country - and the clearest possible warning to anyone who thinks we can run away from dealing with those problems.

Far from weakening our resolve to deliver our economic recovery plan, this decision redoubles it.
We will go on delivering the plan that has cut the deficit by a quarter, and given us record low interest rates and record numbers of jobs.

As the rating agency says, Britain faces huge challenges at home from the debts built up over many many years, and it is made no easier by the very weak economic situation in Europe.

Crucially for families and businesses, they say that ‘the UK's creditworthiness remains extremely high’ thanks in part to a ‘strong track record of fiscal consolidation’ and our ‘political will’.

They also make it absolutely clear that they could downgrade the UK’s credit rating further in the event of ‘reduced political commitment to fiscal consolidation’.

We are not going to run away from our problems, we are going to overcome them.
– George Osborne

More Zerohedge

Buggar, I guess I need to learn to hit that submit button a bit quicker.

reply to post by surrealist


I only beat you by 1 minute as well I thought i did a double post.
But gave your thread a star and flag to make up

Great.... Here come more taxes!

reply to post by skuly

Why exactly do we trust a NGO like Moody's?
Who supervises the supervisors and who controls whom here?
Who appointed them and why has a non-democratic elected body a consultancy role like this in the first place?

I'm not even saying the UK didn't deserve her rating to be downgraded, but how do we know Moody's isn't controlled by the centralist scum in order to silence british EU skeptics and to further push for a EU debt union?

reply to post by misscurious


I have a feeling this is a trend that will just continue. More spending, more taxes, more spending, more taxes. It's a vicious cycle as the government grows bigger.

Who's responsible for the mess? Why the people of course.. Never those who actually created it.