FINANCIAL TIMES: The eurozone debt crisis returned with a vengeance on Friday as Standard & Poor’s, the credit rating agency, downgraded France and Austria – two of the currency zone’s six triple A rated countries – as well as seven nations not in that top tier, among them Italy and Spain…
The downgrades came in lockstep with new problems for the eurozone on other fronts – debt-restructuring talks between Greece and holders of its debt broke down over how large bondholders’ losses should be, raising the spectre of a Greek default in March.
In Frankfurt, the European Central Bank criticised the draft of a new fiscal discipline treaty for the euro area, saying that the latest version amounted to “a substantial watering-down” of tough deficit levels that could allow “easy circumvention of the [deficit] rule” by struggling governments. … (more)
