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On Friday, Moody’s pulled the set off and stripped the US of its last top rating — downgrading it one notch from Aaa to Aa1.
However does it matter?
We looked into the implications of a downgrade a few months in the past, again when Moody’s nonetheless appeared decided to disregard the sixty-foot flashing neon signage writing on the wall.
From a inventory market perspective, who is aware of? We’ve no clue whether or not, or how a lot, it is going to matter when buying and selling opens on Monday. Positive, S&P’s US sovereign downgrade in August 2011 prompted the worst single day fall in US inventory costs for the reason that (admittedly then current) international monetary disaster. However the market shortly recovered. This may occasionally have been folks freaked out about what the downgrade would possibly imply to the monetary plumbing.
So, does the downgrade matter to monetary plumbers this time? From a mechanical perspective, the reply is nearly definitely “under no circumstances”.
Banks’ risk-weighted capital asset calculations look unlikely to be impacted by the score change. It’s because regulators don’t are likely to differentiate between Aaa and Aa1 when setting capital risk-weights. For instance, that is how the BIS sets out its standardised method for credit score threat because it applies to particular person claims to calculate their risk-weighted property in relation to sovereigns:
Moody’s may’ve carried out a three-notch downgrade — from Aaa all the best way to Aa3 — and nothing would’ve modified on this entrance.
How about collateral administration? A note from Barclays on Friday evening regarded on the implications:
For collateral functions, a downgrade to Aa1 can be unlikely to have an impact. As an illustration, DTCC and CME discuss with the asset class as US Treasuries and the haircut is a perform of the maturity and safety sort (TIPS/FRNs) however not the rankings. At LCH, a downgrade to Aa1 is unlikely to result in a change. As an illustration, USTs and Gilts have comparable haircuts, even because the latter are rated decrease.
Moreover, they reckon that the transfer received’t set off strikes on the brief finish of the curve as a result of:
Laws for the reason that monetary disaster has decreased the usage of express rankings tips in funding mandates.
So, they don’t count on waves of asset gross sales from the circa $4.5tn in Treasury and Treasury repo in cash funds.
Shifting away from monetary markets, the downgrade might nicely matter to Moody’s themselves. If S&P World Rankings’ expertise in 2011 is something to go by, the agency can be in for a tough trip. Following S&P’s downgrade greater than a decade in the past, US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner threw a bit of a public wobbly, and filmmaker Michael Moore known as on Obama to arrest the firm’s CEO. As we wrote in March:
Somebody employed a airplane to fly previous their score company’s places of work dragging a banner proclaiming that they need to all be fired, and a bunch of native governments terminated their enterprise with the agency.
In the meantime, and apparently unrelatedly, the Justice Division launched an investigation into S&P. Inside a couple of weeks, CEO Deven Sharma had left the company. When issues moved from being simply an investigation to an precise $5bn federal lawsuit for allegedly deceptive banks in regards to the credibility of its rankings earlier than the 2008 monetary disaster, S&P known as this direct retaliation for its downgrade.
Following the downgrade, Moritz Kraemer — previously World Chief Score Officer of Sovereign Rankings at S&P World Rankings — wrote on LinkedIn that the hazard of retribution was actual:
Within the US, the score businesses are regulated and licensed by the SEC (Securities and Trade Fee). As issues stand in America right this moment, we should surprise, whether or not the SEC can act independently from the needs of the White Home. Do not forget that the earlier SEC chairman, Gary Gensler, resigned on inauguration day, making manner for a Trump acolyte. Will Trump be so enraged by the downgrade of the US (which he certainly will take private) that he’ll demand his pound of flesh and impose revenge on Moody’s.
We’ve already seen the White Home dismiss the evaluation, and lash out at Mark Zandi, Moody’s chief economist. Steven Cheung, assistant to the President, tweeted: “No person takes his ‘evaluation’ severely. He has been confirmed unsuitable time and time once more.”
As reported in MainFT, Zandi was not an creator of this report and works for Moody’s Analytics, a separate a part of the corporate that’s not a part of its rankings enterprise.
Extra typically, whereas a one-notch downgrade from Aaa might not have large market implications it’s nonetheless necessary.
Fiscally, Moody’s has lengthy projected near-basket-case metrics for the US. In reaffirming the Aaa score again in March it wrote that the nation’s Aaa score leaned as a substitute on the nation’s “extraordinary financial power and the distinctive and central roles of the greenback and Treasury bond market in international finance”.
And in its earlier score report reaffirming the Aaa score again in November 2023, Moody’s wrote:
A weakening of establishments and governance power, similar to by way of deterioration in financial and macroeconomic coverage effectiveness or the standard of legislative and judicial establishments, may additionally pressure the score.
The world has moved on since 2023, and Moody’s is marking-to-market.
