Moody’s warns US of credit rating fears

Moody’s warns US of credit rating fears
By Michael Mackenzie in New York and Gillian Tett in London

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a82cfe04-10f5-11df-9a9e-00144feab49a.html

February 3 2010

Moody’s Investors Service fired off a warning on Wednesday that the triple A sovereign credit rating of the US would come under pressure unless economic growth was more robust than expected or tougher actions were taken to tackle the country’s budget deficit.

In a move that follows intensifying concern among investors over the US deficit, Moody’s said the country faced a trajectory of debt growth that was “clearly continuously upward”.

“Unless further measures are taken to reduce the budget deficit further or the economy rebounds more vigorously than expected, the federal financial picture as presented in the projections for the next decade will at some point put pressure on the triple A government bond rating,” the rating agency added in an issuer note.

This week, the White House forecast a $1,565bn budget deficit for 2010, which represents 10.6 per cent of gross domestic product and is the highest such ratio of debt to GDP since the second world war.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a82cfe04-10f5-11df-9a9e-00144feab49a.html