So, the ratings agency Fitch has downgraded seven of the world's biggest banks, including Citigroup, Barclays and Deutsche, saying they are "particularly sensitive" to the challenges faced by financial markets. Meanwhile Standard & Poors has the axe poised over almost the entire Eurozone -- which has prompted a bizarre attack on the UK by the French Finance Minister -- and the third of the Axis of Drivel, Moody's, is also on the rampage, firing off warnings in all directions.
Here's the question: why do these people matter any more? Just three years ago, their abysmal performance made it abundantly clear that they wouldn't recognise pig manure if they were showering in it and drinking it at the same time. Why does anyone think they've suddenly become omniscient? It's perfectly obvious to anyone with the intelligence of an amoeba that the world economy is in big trouble, so why do these dolts get to charge fees for telling us what we already know, and why do markets pay attention to them when they do?
Actually, the real question is this: why do these agencies even exist any more? Whether their failure in correctly assessing the blizzard of structured deals in the mid-noughties was the result of greed, ignorance or incompetence, it was surely a major contributor to the financial crisis that followed. Now they seem to feel their role is to pour gasoline on the flames of the next financial crisis, through a string of crassly mistimed announcements.
Send in the clowns? Don't bother, they're here.
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