sábado, 15 de setembro de 2012

A Egan Jones volta a baixar o rating dos EUA

A Egan Jones anunciou há pouco a decisão de baixar a notação dos EUA na sequência do anúncio por Ben Bernanke do lançamento de mais uma ronda de quantitative easing (QE3). Pela terceira vez desde Julho de 2011, altura em que se antecipou ao anúncio no mesmo sentido da S&P em duas semanas, quando foi retirado triplo AAA, a notação agora atribuída aos EUA é de AA- (era AA). A agência explica assim a racionalidade do seu julgamento:
The FED's QE3 will stoke the stock market and commodity prices, but in our opinion will hurt the US economy and, by extension, credit quality. Issuing additional currency and depressing interest rates via the purchasing of MBS does little to raise the real GDP of the US, but does reduce the value of the dollar (because of the increase in money supply), and in turn increase the cost of commodities (see the recent rise in the prices of energy, gold, and other commodities). The increased cost of commodities will pressure profitability of businesses, and increase the costs of consumers thereby reducing consumer purchasing power. Hence, in our opinion QE3 will be detrimental to credit quality for the US.

Some market observers [Alan Greenspan, por exemplo] contend that a country issuing debt in its own currency can never default since it can simply print additional currency. However, per Reinhart & Rogoff's " This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly " , p.111, 70 out of 320 defaults since 1800 have been on domestic (i.e., local currency) public debt. Note, US funding costs are likely to slowly rise as the global economy recovers or the FED scales back its Treas. purchases (75% recently).

From 2006 to present, the US's debt to GDP rose from 66% to 104% and will probably rise to 110% a year from today under current circumstances; the annual budget deficit is 8%. In comparison, Spain has a debt to GDP of 68.5% and an annual budget deficit of 8.5%. We are therefore downgrading the US country rating from "AA" to "AA-".

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