When we try and make sense of the array of bodies who are ultimately governing us elected or not one group that should be included is the international credit rating agencies.
At the moment they hold Spain’s future in their hands. Previously it has been other countries. They determine our credit rating too.
Kathrin Muehlbronner is a vice–president and senior sovereign risk analyst specialising in Spain at Moody’s credit ratings agency a polyglot economics graduate of the university of Tübingen. That makes her the woman whose say-so can plunge Spain into the unknown by the simple act of declaring that Europe’s fifth largest economy no longer merits its Aa1 rating.
As the nations of the world struggle to extricate themselves from the global financial crash Moody’s and its two main competitors Standard & Poor’s and Fitch are not objective neutrals whose only concern is to make intelligent oversight of the markets.
We treat the ratings agencies as if they were umpires. They even have a place in some of the cobbled-up regulatory frameworks. But they are players and not just players but speculators.
The credit ratings agencies are leading a market assault on nations and peoples.