Standard and Poor’s Downgrades 5 European Nations’ Credit Ratings

The European nations of Cyprus, Italy, Portugal and Spain had their credit ratings downgraded by two notches and Austria, France, Malta, Slovakia and Slovenia were hit by a one notch downgrade Friday afternoon January 13, 2012. The announcement came after 4:00 pm Eastern time by the S&P so as not to spook the market into a possible free fall although word of the downgrade leaked out earlier and the US markets dropped nearly 50 points on the DOW.

The action taken by the S&P credit rating service was because they deems the actions taken by these countries so far are not sufficient to relieve the systemic stress in the euro zone. Really? No kidding the measures taken so far aren't sufficient. If they were, the European union wouldn't be on the verge of collapse. It's a wonder that the credit of any nation in the Euro Union has any credibility whatsoever at this point. Europe has been running roughshod with money that belongs to the people for decades and they expect a little bandage is going to solve the crisis of decade of monetary and fiscal irresponsibility.

I find it utterly amazing that educated men and women who run these nations cannot figure out that they can't spend more money than they take in. But, gee whiz, neither can the majority of the population who collect government money for doing nothing. Apparently no one realizes that there is no more money to spend and all the EU has been doing for the last 5 years is to move the money around and put out one fire after another. At some point there will be no more money to spend, and serious things will happen. Yes, serious consequences will take place when the minions don't have any cash because the government can no longer afford to dole money out to them.

Moving headlong into eventual default is Greece where talks broke down between the nation and its creditors over swapping debt. if a default is to be avoided someone somewhere will have to buy Greece's debt. But, this will only delay the inevitable because the powers that be still want to spend like there is tomorrow.

Some day soon, there will be no tomorrow. Very soon.