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How the euro crisis end game might look
After the fiasco of Collateralised Debt Obligations, anything the clowns of the credit-rating agencies have to say about Europe's sovereign debt crisis deserves to be taken with a sack full of salt. Unfortunately, continued use of ratings for regulatory and asset allocation purposes ensures they remain as powerful a force as ever. Having largely failed to warn about the dangers of eurozone debt, Standard & Poor's has upheld a long tradition of making a bad situation worse by putting Italy on negative credit watch, thereby generating a fresh bout of nerves in already dangerously unsettled markets. There were other ... (full story)