in Accordance with the customs, the news came on a Friday night, after the markets close. The penalty was predictable, even if it wasn’t expected so soon ; with a few days ahead of the schedule originally planned, the agency Moody’s has lowered by one notch, to ” Baa3 “, the rating of Italian sovereign debt, on the 19th of October. This decision, with a stable outlook, up the Treasury bills of the third largest economy of the euro area at the same level as the debt Hungarian or Romanian, in a walk of the hell of the junk bonds (” junk bonds “). The edge of the abyss, so.
In the note explaining their decision, the analysts of the agency highlighted the government’s choice Tale, which was sent to Brussels, Monday 15 October, a draft budget 2019 with a deficit of 2.4% of gross domestic product (GDP), far from the 0.8 per cent announced in the spring. Such a deficit would lead the Italian debt remain, in the next few years, around 130 % of GDP, whereas it should begin to decline significantly, thus increasing the risks weighing on the country in the event of a downturn.
The skepticism of Moody’s with comments harsh enough on the” absence of a coherent programme of growth “, which will drive the Peninsula to stay around the 1 % increase in GDP, ” beyond the tax incentives are temporary “. The agency matches, however, its degradation to a stable outlook, a reflection of the strengths of an economy considered ” robust “. Remains that in his eyes, the probability of an outflow of Italian of the euro increases.
“Skid unprecedented,”
The agency Standard & Poor’s, for its part, has announced a decision for the 26 October. According to the daily Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, it should not degrade the Italian note, but adding only a negative perspective, even if a more serious sanction is not to…
