Scénario catastrophe ? Cela y ressemble …
Selon l’agence Bloomberg, Standard & Poor’s est en passe de placer les 17 pays de la zone euro sous surveillance négative.
Ni plus ni moins ….
Des informations qui semblent appuyer les déclarations du Financial Times, laissant entendre que l’agence de notation avait prévenu la France, l’Allemagne et les quatre autres pays de la zone euro notés « AAA » qu’ils pourraient être déclassés dans les prochains 90 jours.
Raisons invoquées : l’aggravation de la crise de la dette.
L’annonce du Financial Times aura d’ores et déjà provoqué un net recul de l’euro face au dollar, la monnaie européenne chutant de 1,3460 à 1,3308 dollar aux alentours de 20 heures. Parallèlement, Wall Street, qui affichait jusqu’alors en nette hausse ralentissait sa progression à +0,45%.
Lundi, en fin de soirée, des responsables européens ont quant à eux confirmé que l’agence de notation Standard & Poor’s allait placer sous surveillance négative les notes des 17 pays de la zone euro, dont les six pays les mieux notés : la France, l’Allemagne, l’Autriche, la Finlande, le Luxembourg et les Pays-Bas.
«Nous pensons que l’absence de progrès des dirigeants européens pour contrôler l’étendue de la crise financière pourrait être le reflet de faiblesses structurelles dans le processus de prise de décision au sein de la zone euro et de l’Union européenne», aurait expliqué S&P.
S’agissant de l‘Allemagne, l’agence s’inquiète de «l’impact potentiel» de ce qu’elle considère comme «une aggravation des problèmes monétaires, financiers et politiques de l’Union européenne, économique et monétaire».
Sources : AFP, Reuters
Mise à jour : Dans un communiqué, l’agence de notation Standard & Poor’s annonce qu’elle place sous surveillance négative les notes de 15 pays de la zone euro, dont la France et l’Allemagne. Ces dernières voient leur triple A menacé.
WSJ
By NICOLE LUNDEEN, JEANNETTE NEUMANN and JAVIER E. DAVID
The ratings of 15 euro-zone nations were placed on credit watch negative by Standard & Poor’s Rating Services, which cited tightening credit conditions and disagreements among European policy makers on how to tackle the region’s immediate and long-term economic challenges.
The decision to put the countries on negative credit watch?which signals a downgrade within 90 days has 50-50 odds?would hit six countries with the rating firm’s highest, triple-A rating: Germany, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland and Luxembourg.
The shift by the ratings firm affected the long-term sovereign ratings of all members of the euro zone except for Cyprus, which was already on credit watch negative, and Greece, whose ratings have already been cut to junk and weren’t affected by Monday’s move.
The ratings firm, in announcing its move, said « that systemic stresses in the euro zone have risen in recent weeks to the extent that they now put downward pressure on the credit standing of the euro zone as a whole. »
The expected move comes ahead of this week’s European Union summit. On Friday, euro-zone officials are expected to lay out plans to enforce stricter budget rules across the currency bloc in an effort to keep the Continent’s turmoil from worsening.
The yields on bonds issued by financially stressed European governments such as Italy and Spain have soared in recent months amid questions about growth prospects, debt loads and budget deficits. Rising yields make it costlier for governments to borrow and can slow growth at a time when the region is already dealing with high unemployment and near recession conditions.
The meeting comes on the heels of a coordinated action by the world’s central banks to make dollars available to banks at a lower cost. The move, made last week, has helped lower bond yields in Europe by allaying fear that national governments won’t be able to fund themselves.
Over the course of the year, European officials have met repeatedly to address the debt crisis. Yet optimism that has followed news of apparent breakthroughs has repeatedly given way to further market unrest, as details fell short of what the market expected.
The S&P move follows an August decision by the rating firm to downgrade the U.S. debt rating to double-A-plus from triple-A after contentious debt-ceiling talks.
Current European regulation requires credit-rating firms to let issuers know of any rating action 12 hours before that change is reported to the broader market. European regulators last month proposed that rating firms notify issuers « a full working day » before publication of a rating action « to leave the rated entity sufficient time to verify the correctness of data underlying the rating. »
The rating firms have expressed concerns that 12 hours is already too generous and heightens the possibility that a government could leak an impending downgrade or outlook change. David H. Levey, a former sovereign-debt analyst at Moody’s Investors Service from 1985 until 2004, said rating firms typically used to notify countries of a downgrade or outlook change one to two hours ahead of time because of concerns about leaks to the media and the potential for insider trading by government officials. « The longer the period of pre-announcement, the greater are both of those risks. »
Corrections & Amplifications
The ratings of 15 of the 17 euro-zone nations, excluding Cyprus and Greece, were placed on « credit watch negative » by Standard & Poor’s Rating Services. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said all 17 euro-zone members had been put on negative watch.
Le texte de Standard & Poor’s :
Standard & Poor’s is placing its ‘AAA’ long-term unsolicited sovereign credit rating on the Republic of France on CreditWatch with negative implications. At the same time we are affirming France’s ‘A-1+’ short-term unsolicited sovereign credit rating.
The CreditWatch placement is prompted by our concerns about the potential impact on France of what we view as deepening political, financial, and monetary problems within the European Economic and Monetary Union.
Our CreditWatch review will focus on the « political », « external », « fiscal », and « monetary » scores we have assigned to France in accordance with our criteria.
We expect to conclude our review as soon as possible after the European summit on Dec. 9, 2011.
FRANKFURT (Standard & Poor’s) Dec. 5, 2011–Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services today placed its ‘AAA’ long-term unsolicited sovereign credit ratings on the Republic of France on CreditWatch with negative implications. At the same time, we affirmed the ‘A-1+’ short-term unsolicited sovereign credit rating on France.
Our transfer and convertibility (T&C) assessment for France, as for all European Economic and Monetary Union (eurozone) members, is ‘AAA’, reflecting Standard & Poor’s view that the likelihood of the European Central Bank (ECB) restricting nonsovereign access to foreign currency needed for debt service is extremely low. This reflects the full and open access to foreign currency that holders of euros enjoy and which we expect to remain the case in the future.
RATIONALE
The CreditWatch placement is prompted by our concerns about the potential impact on France of what we view as deepening political, financial, and monetary problems within the eurozone. To the extent that these eurozone-wide issues permanently constrain the availability of credit to the economy, France’s economic growth outlook–and therefore the prospects for a sustained reduction of its public debt ratio–could be affected. Further, it is our opinion that the lack of progress the European policymakers have made so far in controlling the spread of the financial crisis may reflect structural weaknesses in the decision-making process within the eurozone and European Union. This, in turn, informs our view about the ability of European policymakers to take the proactive and resolute measures needed in times of financial stress. We are therefore reassessing the eurozone’s record of debt-crisis management and its implications for our view on the effectiveness of policymaking in France.
Our CreditWatch review will focus on four areas of our criteria (see « Sovereign Government Rating Methodology and Assumptions, » published June 30, 2011.)
The political score. In our view, the overall consistency, predictability, and effectiveness of policy coordination among institutions within the eurozone has weakened at a time of severe ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned. For France, we believe this environment could complicate the implementation of the government’s fiscal consolidation strategy, possibly delaying the stabilization and reversal of the government debt trajectory. Specifically, we will review the policymaking environment in terms of: the predictability of its overall policy framework and its policy responses to current developments (see « Sovereign Government Rating Methodology and Assumptions, » paragraph 40; all paragraph references herein are to this publication); and the effectiveness of policymaking in addressing periods of economic distress and correcting economic imbalances (paragraph 41).
The fiscal score. In our view, the budgetary measures announced by the French government to date may be insufficient to meet next year’s budget deficit target of 4.5% of GDP, should France’s underlying economic growth in 2012 fall below the government’s current forecast of 1.0%. For 2012, Standard & Poor’s projects real GDP growth of 0.5% and a budget deficit of 4.8% of GDP. Moreover, in our opinion, there are non-negligible downside risks to the government’s real GDP forecast of 2% during 2013-2016, which we believe would require additional deficit-reducing measures to fully meet its medium-term budgetary targets. At the same time, we believe the French government has shown its commitment to taking additional budgetary measures–should this be necessary–to fully comply with its medium-term budgetary strategy.
The external score. French financial institutions and companies are currently experiencing rising borrowing costs on their debt, which implies more-complicated access to financing. We estimate French banks’ external debt at about 104% of GDP in 2011, of which about 60% is short term, implying sizable external refinancing needs for the French banking sector in 2012, in our opinion. This implies considerable external refinancing needs for the French banking sector during 2012 in our view–though we take note of the headway many larger French commercial banks are making in scaling back medium- and long-term refinancing needs by shedding external assets. Liquidity concerns and the weakening asset quality of French banks’ securities and loan portfolios could, in our view, increase the risk of the need for additional capital injections by the state or similar interventions. In our view, this raises the possibility that contingent liabilities could materialize. In addition, we will review the risk of a sudden reduction of cross-border interbank lines resulting from perceptions of increasing financial-sector stress (paragraph 76). We will also review France’s fiscal capacity (at its current rating level) to provide additional support to its national banking system should further official assistance be required.
The monetary score. We will review the ECB’s policy settings and their impact on financial market conditions, the real economy, and ultimately France’s creditworthiness (paragraphs 107, 117, and 118). If we were to conclude that the ECB’s policy stance is unlikely to be effective in mitigating the economic and financial shocks that we believe France could be experiencing, we could lower this score.
CREDITWATCH
We expect to conclude our review as soon as possible after the European summit on Dec. 9, 2011.
If we change one or more scores, we could lower the long-term rating by up to two notches. Conversely, if the above concerns were mitigated by what we consider to be appropriate policy action, we could affirm the long-term rating at ‘AAA’.
S&P pr
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