France losses AAA Credit Rating

(Reuters) - France has been notified that Standard & Poor's has cut its triple-A credit rating by one notch to AA+ and will step up reforms to shore up its economy, Finance Minister Francois Baroin said on Friday.

Minutes after he emerged from an emergency meeting with President Nicolas Sarkozy, Baroin appeared on the nightly television news to announce the downgrade and try to play down its impact on the French economy.

"It's a downgrade, a one-notch change," he told the France 2 television channel, adding that several other euro zone countries faced similar treatment.

"Clearly, this is not a disaster. It is as if you asked a student who got 20 of 20 (grades) in school for a very long time whether dropping to 19 was a disaster. No, it's an excellent grade."

He added that the move meant that ratings agencies were punishing the euro zone as a whole for governance problems that had contributed to its debt crisis, and that France would seek to increase the pace of economic reforms.

European sources have told Reuters that downgrades of several sovereign ratings in the euro zone were imminent......read more

RussiaToday on Jan 13, 2012