Bond Outlook by bridport & cie, November 10th 2010

The Chinese have moved from stubborn defence, to outright attack, on the macro-economic front. “Dagong”, the Chinese agency created in 1994 for rating domestic entities, began to rate international sovereign issues in July 2010. Little notice was taken of them at the time, but their recent downgrading of US Treasury debt from AA (watch list negative) to A (watch list negative) can be seen as a definitive first strike.