Thaindian News

New York, Aug 17 (IANS/EFE) Fitch Ratings has announced that it is maintaining its evaluation of the US credit rating at the maximum level of AAA, with a stable outlook, a decision that comes two weeks after Standard & Poor’s downgraded US bonds to AA+.

The confirmation of the AAA rating reflects the fact that “the key pillars of US’s exceptional creditworthiness remains intact: its pivotal role in the global financial system and the flexible, diversified and wealthy economy that provides its revenue base”, Fitch said in a statement Tuesday.

“Monetary and exchange rate flexibility further enhances the capacity of the economy to absorb and adjust to ’shocks’,” the agency said.

Investors and analysts are paying very close attention to the steps that the main rating agencies take after S&P;’s Aug 5 downgrade of US sovereign debt, which followed the acrimonious political battle in Washington over raising the debt ceiling.

S&P;’s decision last week sparked a wave of instability on the New York Stock Exchange, which spread to the world’s main financial markets and sent their main indicators into a tailspin.

Despite the fact that Fitch decided to keep its AAA rating for the US, it warned that it would review that rating once it analyzes the results of the deliberations of the bipartisan congressional “super committee” tasked with further reducing the deficit, the results of which should become known in late November.

In addition, the agency said that it will analyze the US macroeconomic prospects both in the short and medium terms at the end of this year.

Meanwhile, the other major rating agency, Moody’s, decided Aug 2 to maintain its maximum rating for the US, but it assigned a “negative” outlook to the country, and six days after that it issued another alert that it could reduce the country’s sovereign debt rating before 2013 if Washington does not adopt new measures to achieve a greater reduction of the deficit.

–IANS/EFE
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