finance

Standard & Poor’s is one of three major American rating agencies (Fitch Ratings and Moody’s Investor Services are the others). They’re in the business of assessing risk of various financial instruments and the reliability of the companies and governments that issue or trade them, and their ratings affect both investor interest and the prices paid for said financial paper.

A report has just been published in the US called the: “The Potential Impact of the Great Recession on Future Retirement Incomes.”

I really wished we had an institution attempting the same type of research in the UK.

I have been meaning to write about an article that appeared in the New York Times on the 13th May entitled: “In Shift, Ads Try to Entice Over-55 Set.”

All of these quotes should be music to my ears but I just wonder why it has taken so long for the penny to drop – as us Brits would say.

The Harris Poll of about 3000 Americans generated a news release with the tag line that: “People over 65 less likely than younger generations to be taking some steps to economize.”

That conclusion chimes with my own gut feeling but I thought it worth looking to see what evidence Harris produces to justify the conclusion.

Ratings firm Standard & Poor's has downgraded Japan's sovereign debt rating by one notch to AA- from AA, saying that it expects the country's fiscal deficits to remain high and noting there is a lack of a "coherent strategy" by the government to tackle the issues. Beware US and most of Europe!