Moody Downgrades Japan

British National Debt and GDP of the United Kingdom

From both these graphs, I can guess that the stimlus done by the British Government of the time seemed to work so a Keynesian stimlus can save an economy.

Edit: The big 3 credit agencies think the UK can keep its AAA rating but the Chinese agency downgraded us to AA- IIRC.

edited 24th Aug '11 5:09:26 AM by whaleofyournightmare

Question: if everyone loses AAA credit ranking, would that effectively make AA+ the new AAA?

Technically yes by way that the entire bar is lowered. But it would still be seen as less than ideal owing to historical record of AAA ratings.

edited 24th Aug '11 5:34:54 AM by MajorTom

No because AAA would still be seen as a safe bet whereas a AA+ rating would be seen as more risky.

But if no investment was deemed safe enough to get the AAA rating, then AA+ would be the safest you could get.

Yeah but they would still be an AAA rating that could be reached.

It would be the credit rating agencies' way of saying that the creditworthiness of all nations had been reduced by the financial problems of the past few years ... which is largely true.