por Maria Teixeira Alves, em 06.07.11
I think the seriousness is an instrument of credibility. Moody's did not present a single new argument to justify the downgrade of the portuguese rating in four notchs, to junk bonds. Someone said that the shareholders of the rating agencies are, at the same time, doing short selling with the Portuguese government debt securities. If so, this is a great way to give profits to Moody's shareholders. The portuguese downgrade, curiously, always happening when Portugal began to implement austerity measures to reduce the deficit and in this way seeks to stop the debt. This is suspicious.
We need someone to oversee these evaluations.