Sovereign debt bubble thread

[Neil]

How in the world did Saudi Arabia ever aquire a credit rating?

There's oil in them thar sand dunes.

[Admiral Yi]

There's oil in them thar sand dunes.

Which diminishes the need to borrow money on the bond market.

[Neil]

There's oil in them thar sand dunes.

Which diminishes the need to borrow money on the bond market.

Unless you have to make sudden, large purchases of US weapons while at the same time ensuring that all those princes have an adequate number of palaces.

[Admiral Yi]

Unless you have to make sudden, large purchases of US weapons while at the same time ensuring that all those princes have an adequate number of palaces.

Yeah, I couldn't figure it out either.

[Razgovory]

There's oil in them thar sand dunes.

Which diminishes the need to borrow money on the bond market.

Doesn't mean you don't have to borrow sometimes.  Despite huge gold and silver mines Spain defaulted a couple of times during it's empire.

[Admiral Yi]

Doesn't mean you don't have to borrow sometimes.  Despite huge gold and silver mines Spain defaulted a couple of times during it's empire.

Spain was constantly involved in ruinous wars.

[The Minsky Moment]

Saudi Aramco - a company - owns most of the Saudi oilfields and receives the revenue.  The oil revenue only flows to the government in the form of royalties and dividends from Aramco.

[Richard Hakluyt]

There's oil in them thar sand dunes.

Which diminishes the need to borrow money on the bond market.

Oil fell to around $10 a barrel back in 1999 (or thereabouts), the Saudis had to borrow quite a lot of money back then.

[Iormlund]

Our beloved leader has finally thrown in the towel. General elections in Spain this November.

[Neil]

Our beloved leader has finally thrown in the towel. General elections in Spain this November.

Expect a terrorist attack to decide that one too.

[FunkMonk]

Our beloved leader has finally thrown in the towel. General elections in Spain this November.

Expect a terrorist attack to decide that one too.

[MadImmortalMan]

Italy had basically fled the bond market and seems to be collapsing. Spain re-scheduled their auctions for September. The Italians are lashing out in their death throes though.

lol

Italy prosecutors seize Moody's, S&P documents

Aug 4 (Reuters) - Italian prosecutors have seized documents at the offices of rating agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor's in a probe over suspected "anomalous" fluctuations in Italian share prices, a prosecutor said on Thursday.

The measure is aimed at "verifying whether these agencies respect regulations as they carry out their work," Carlo Maria Capistro, who heads the prosecutors' office in the southern town of Trani which is leading the probe, told Reuters.

The documents were seized at the Milan offices of the two agencies on Wednesday, he said, adding that prosecutors had also asked Italian market regulator Consob to provide documents relating to their registration in Italy.

S&P in Italy said in a statement it believed the probe was "groundless."

"We strongly defend our work, our reputation and that of our analysts," it said.

Moody's said it "takes its responsibilities surrounding the dissemination of market sensitive information very seriously and is cooperating with the authorities."

The Trani prosecutors have opened two probes -- one for each rating agency -- after a complaint by two consumer groups over the impact of their reports about Italy on Milan stock prices.

The first complaint was filed against Moody's after it published a report in May 2010 about the risk of contagion for Italian banks from the Greek crisis.

A second complaint filed in May this year targeted Standard & Poor's after it threatened to downgrade Italy's credit rating because of its huge public debt.

The prosecutors are also investigating whether any crimes were committed during a sell-off in Italian assets on July 8 and July 11 as fears spread that the euro zone's third largest economy is being sucked into the widening debt crisis.

One of the consumer groups behind the complaints said the probe was aimed at finding out whether the market's sharp drop was due to a "precise scheme by hedge funds and other unidentified players that could be linked to the negative comments about Italian public finances by the rating agencies."

Consob last month summoned Moody's and S&P for meetings and urged them not to release their statements during market hours.

[Razgovory]

I hope they shoot Silvio and hang his corpse from a gas station.

[Razgovory]

Doesn't mean you don't have to borrow sometimes.  Despite huge gold and silver mines Spain defaulted a couple of times during it's empire.

Spain was constantly involved in ruinous wars.

Thank God we dodged that bullet.

[Iormlund]