ENGLISH VERSION / Moody's, no news yet

No news yet. Moody’s rating agency, always demanding of the Countries clearness on public accounts, maintains an unfathomable silence. Who is behind our Country’s continual downgrades? What is the rationale such decisions are based on? Who are exactly the analysts evaluating the economic weight of Italy? Since over a month we have been trying to ask these questions to Moody’s top levels. So far, no one bothered answering.

However, we managed to find another piece of the puzzle: we discovered name and surname of the analyst who signed the last Italian downgrades and Germany’s negative outlook. The question that comes to mind is: why such mystery within the rating agency that push the financial institutions to “snub” the investments on the most endangered government stocks, therefore increasing the gap between the Italian ten years stocks and the German Bund, making investments disadvantageous and making of Affairs Square a “tasty morsel” for International speculation? We maintain that the Italians, whose financial future depends on those factors too, have the right of knowing who has the power to decide on Italian and European stability. Yesterday night has been Germany’s turn: because the USA agency cut the German outlook, so anticipating the “triple A” cut. Behind the last documentations there is a German person living in Frankfurt, named D.H. After a careful editorial office’s meeting, being responsible and not wanting to pillory anybody, we decided to only publish the initials of the author of such measures. But this is not all. We also believe that, behind such reports, there must be more than a single analyst and that, very likely, a more complex board might be working on them. This is why we ask Moody's once more: Who is behind our Country’s continual downgrades? What is the rationale such decisions are based on? Who are exactly the analysts evaluating the economic weight of Italy?

Now we demand an exact answer. All the Italians have a right to know. As Linkiesta explains today, the Countries pay the rating agencies to be judged and then declassed. The amount paid by the Treasury is not at all clear. On the contrary, the agencies themselves state that they do not receive any payment to evaluate the Countries sovereign debts. However the interesting dossier published by Linkiesta paints a totally different picture. Considering this too, we do believe that the Italian citizens and taxpayers have the right to know how much being flunked by the rating agencies is costing us. Which is why we ask the same questions we asked of Moody's over two months ago.

We also appeal to the Council President, Mario Monti, who has been part of Moody’s “Senior European advisory council” : help us to get some answers. We are patient. And, with patience, we look forward to some explanations.

(traduzione a cura di Vannella Sechi)