The fallout from Fitch Ratings’ downgrade of the US puts the focus on the countries still holding onto the coveted top credit grade.
Economies with the highest credit rating at S&P Global Ratings, Fitch and Moody’s Investors Service include Germany, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Singapore and Australia. Canada is rated AAA by two of the ratings companies.
Fitch’s downgrade of the US sovereign follows the cut by S&P in 2011, leaving Moody’s as the only major rating company keeping its top-tier grade for the world’s largest economy. Fitch said the cut reflects expected fiscal deterioration and a growing government debt burden after repeated debt-limit standoffs.
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So far, concerns that the ratings agencies may shift their gaze to the remaining bloc are premature, according to Berenberg Capital Markets.
“Every country is different, has its own growth pattern — its own tax and spending structures so it doesn’t suggest any contagion to other countries,” senior economist Mickey Levy said on Bloomberg Television. “No country that has the strength of the US has been affected by this.”
For Kevin Muir, a former trader who now writes the MacroTourist newsletter, US securities are over-owned in the global financial community and the downgrade could lead to a re-weighting among some investors toward the assets of other countries. But for other market participants, it won’t change their view about the US.
“Is Canada really a better credit than the United States? Or Luxembourg?,” Muir wrote. “The US is the world’s dominant power, and sure they have done some ill-advised things like wave a gun around threatening to shoot their own financial system with a default, but we all know they will eventually pay their bills.”