Thursday, May 21, 2009

The most important thing to remember here, however, is that ratings agencies don’t matter any more.

From Reuters:

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Felix Salmon

is summer arriving?

May 21st, 2009

The US triple-A: Nothing to worry about

Posted by: Felix Salmon
Tags: credit ratings

Bill Gross seems to have caused a bit of an uproar with his off-the-cuff comment to Reuters:

Asked what is driving the market declines, Gross told Reuters via email that investors fear the U.S. is “going the way of the U.K. — losing AAA rating which affects all financial assets and the dollar.”

On the one hand, as ex post explanations for market declines go, this one’s quite good: if true, it helps explains why both stocks and bonds are going down on the same day. What’s more, it tidily fits in to a news story — that S&P has downgraded the UK’s triple-A outlook — and journalists love any explanation for a market move which makes it seem that it’s some predictable result of an event in the news.

But let’s get some perspective here. The Dow and the S&P 500 closed down 1.5% and 1.9% respectively, which by recent standards is a perfectly normal move, well within the range of what you’d expect on any given day. What’s more, S&P putting the UK on watch for a possible downgrade is a decision prompted by economic fundamentals. Any such move with the US, by contrast, would be entirely political, and in any event would say much more about S&P than it did about Treasuries.

The most important thing to remember here, however, is that ratings agencies don’t matter any more. They lost their credibility when structured finance blew up, and the number of people buying Treasuries because S&P says that they’re triple-A rated is exactly zero.

There are lots of triple-A rated securities; people buy Treasuries because they’re liquid. The US triple-A may or may not disappear at some point, but if and when that happens it’ll be a lagging indicator, and there will already be a select group of alternative securities which are trading at lower yields in dollars. So long as Treasuries have the lowest yields in the dollar-denominated world, they will retain their triple-A, and there are much more important things to worry about."

Me:

“number of people buying Treasuries because S&P says that they’re triple-A rated is exactly zero.”

Then how could his comment matter to the market, or even be correct. Presumably, some people bought and sold today. They had, well, I’m assuming that they had, reasons for their actions. How can they fear the US losing something that doesn’t matter?

“Bill Gross seems to have caused a bit of an uproar with his off-the-cuff comment to Reuters:”

Maybe it’s his Hermes shirts, whatever they are. I don’t see them at Goodwill.

- Posted by Don the libertarian Democrat

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