Fears grow as S&P cuts Italy’s credit rating

ITALY has become the sixth eurozone country to have its credit rating downgraded, after Standard & Poor's cut the country's rating by one notch from A+ to A with a negative outlook for the future.
 
S&P said that Italy's reduced economic activity "will make the government's revised fiscal targets difficult to achieve". They also pointed to the Italian government's "tentative policy response to recent market pressures", which may cause problems as Italy struggles to cut its bloated deficit.
 
Italy has the second-largest debt level in Europe and joins Spain, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus and the Republic of Ireland in having its credit rating cut as part of a snowballing eurozone debt crisis.
 
"Perceptions are more important than realities," Carl Weinberg of High Frequency Economics told the BBC. "Investors will be shaken, as if they are not shaken enough already, by what appears to be decaying conditions for another sovereign issuer."
 
Read a full report at BBC News. ·