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| BondsOnline.com: instant access to and extensive coverage of over 3.5 million stocks, bonds, indexes and other securities covering major and emerging markets and exchanges across the globe. |
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| Bonds Online |
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| 5/10/2013Market Performance |
| Municipal Bonds |
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S&P National Bond Index
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3.00% |
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S&P California Bond Index
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2.96% |
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S&P New York Bond Index
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3.13% |
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S&P National 0-5 Year Municipal Bond Index
|
0.70% |
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| S&P/BGCantor US Treasury Bond |
400.09 |
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| Income Equities: |
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| Preferred Stocks |
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S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index
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848.03 |
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S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index (CAD)
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636.26 |
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S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index (TR)
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1,701.05 |
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S&P U.S. Preferred Stock Index (TR) (CAD)
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1,276.26 |
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| REITs |
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S&P REIT Index
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174.07 |
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S&P REIT Index (TR)
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425.30 |
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| MLPs |
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S&P MLP Index
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2,469.58 |
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S&P MLP Index (TR)
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5,428.50 |
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See Data
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Who Would Dare Downgrade U.S. Debt? |
Forbes.com - May 10, 2010 - by Matthew Craft
Martin Weiss says it's time to take Uncle Sam's AAA rating away.
The Weiss Group returned to the ratings game last week, and the research firm's chairman has already made a provocative challenge to the dominant credit rating agencies: strip the AAA-rating from U.S. government debt.
In an open letter to Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch on Monday, Martin Weiss argues that the three rating agencies should downgrade U.S. long-term debt. He acknowledges the turmoil it would create, punishing Treasury bonds and causing interest rates to spike. In Weiss's view, however, leaving the AAA-rating untouched could ultimately prove far worse. It gives Congress a free pass to add to the public debt and encourages investors to buy Treasury notes and bonds, whose low yields, he believes, don’t compensate for the dangers.
"Worst of all," Weiss writes, "by continuing to reaffirm America's triple-A rating, you help create a false sense of security overall--the recipe for a possible meltdown in the market for U.S. sovereign debts."
Rating agencies were widely criticized for failing to see the dangers in the real estate market and awarding high marks to bonds backed by subprime mortgages. Weiss argues that they were also too slow to downgrade insurance companies before a wave of life insurers went bankrupt in the early 1990s and failed to pull Enron's investment-grade ratings until days before the company collapsed.
If the rating agencies had acted earlier, Weiss says, the issuers might have acted sooner to bolster their balance sheets. Downgrading the U.S. debt now, he reasons, could force the government to get its budget in order.
In an interview, Weiss said he doesn't have a specific credit grade in mind. Any change would send the right message. "I'm afraid of what would happen if they don't do it," he said.
A downgrade can make it harder for a country to manage its debts. In late April, when S&P slapped a junk rating on Greece and lowered Spain and Portugal's ratings, the countries' bonds were sold off, causing yields to jump. The prospect of paying unbearable borrowing rates to finance its debts forced Greece to ask the European Union for bailout funds.
Weiss is hardly a disinterested observer; he's a competitor. The Weiss Group announced last week that it was bringing back its bank and insurance ratings business, Weiss Ratings, after acquiring it from The Street.com. The Weiss Group sold the unit in 2006. Unlike Moody's and S&P, which are paid by companies issuing debt, Weiss Ratings gets its fees from investors.
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Income Security Recommendation January 2013 Issue.
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