Moody’s Continues Euro Downgrade Spree, Cuts Portuguese, British Banks
by Tyler Durden
Zerohedge.com
10/07/2011
This morning Moody’s resume its Freudian transference experiment borne out of its inability to downgrade the US by continuing to downgrade insolvent European banks, by downgrading a whole bunch of Portuguese and UK as of several hours ago. Per Bloomberg: “Nine Portuguese banks had their debt ratings cut by Moody’s Investors Service by one or two levels, which cited concern about funding, bad loans and holdings of government debt. Moody’s cut the “standalone” debt ratings of three banks, Banco Espirito Santo SA, Banco Comercial Portugues SA and Banco BPI SA, by two levels, the ratings company said in a statement today.” Elsewhere, per BBC, “Moody’s has downgraded the credit rating of 12 UK financial firms including Lloyds TSB, RBS, Nationwide and Santander UK. Moody’s said it now believed the UK government was less likely to support some firms if they got into trouble. However, the firm emphasised that the downgrades did not “reflect a deterioration in the financial strength of the banking system”. Moody’s also downgraded nine Portuguese banks, blaming financial weakness. Shares in both RBS and Lloyds were down by about 3.5% in morning trading.” Since all of this is certainly pried in (ask Dexia), we expect the weak hands shorting throng to continue its scramble to cover, until the next European bank fails, and the next, and so on until it s the longs turn to realize that not only has nothing improved but things are progressively getting worse.
More on Portugal:
The Rest…HERE
