Sovereign credit ratings have been buoyed up for years by the belief that no matter how much governments actually borrowed, they were committed to coming close to balanced budgets as soon as was prudently possible. That commitment may now be wavering. The anti-deficit rhetoric never meant that governments abandoned their

The UK’s currency remains very volatile post-Brexit, but may be recovering. The country’s credit rating may suffer more permanent damage. As yet, the credit world has been cautiously negative about the June 23 referendum on quitting the European Union. Both S&P and Fitch downgraded the UK’s sovereign rating to AA

Oil and Gas credit consensus isn’t following the price up The oil price has been trending sharply upwards for most of 2016. Even with a 10 percent dip since the June high, Brent crude is up about 50 percent since the beginning of the year. U.S natural gas prices have

This blog discusses the scale of the global pension funding crisis and highlights the risk to Sovereign credit ratings. This week the main holders of Gilts refused to co-operate with the Bank of England. The post-Brexit QE stimulus relies on pension funds and insurance companies selling Gilts at attractively high

This blog reports on the volatility of credit estimates measured by Credit Benchmark, compared with equity market volatility measured by the CBOE Volatility Index (the ‘VIX’). The two measures have recently shown a sharp divergence. This week, S&P Global Ratings reported that U.S. companies are as vulnerable to defaults and

The 2016 EU-wide stress test results covering 51 banks were published last week. Credit Benchmark data shows a clear relationship between risk and CET 1 ratios, especially under the Adverse scenario. The stress test results can be interpreted in a number of ways, but the key messages are clear. The