29/04 Xếp hạng tín nhiệm Mỹ chỉ đạt mức BBB?

Thứ Sáu, 29/04/2011 | 14:56

(Vietstock) - Ngày 28/04, Tổ chức Weiss Ratings xếp hạng tín nhiệm Mỹ ở mức C. Mức tín nhiệm C của Weiss gần tương đương với mức BBB của các tổ chức xếp hạng lớn như Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s và Fitch. Mức tín nhiệm này cao hơn 2 bậc so với cấp độ không đầu tư.

* Mỹ: Kinh tế suy yếu đáng kể trong quý 1, lạm phát tăng vọt

* S&P hạ triển vọng tín nhiệm Mỹ từ ổn định xuống tiêu cực

* S&P và Moody’s bất đồng về xếp hạng tín nhiệm của Mỹ

Weiss Ratings, công ty có trụ sở tại Jupiter (Florida), đã công bố xếp hạng của 47 quốc gia vào ngày 28/04. Theo báo cáo của Weiss, mức tín nhiệm C của Mỹ đứng ở vị thứ 33.

Ông Martin Weiss, Chủ tịch của Weiss Ratings nhận định trong báo cáo: “Mức xếp hạng AAA/Aaa mà Standard & Poor’s, Moody’s và Fitch dành cho Mỹ là không công bằng đối với nhà đầu tư và người gửi tiết kiệm. Mỹ cần phải nhận được xếp hạng trung thực để củng cố tình hình tài chính của mình”.

Trung Quốc và Thái Lan có mức xếp hạng tín nhiệm cao nhất

Weiss Ratings dành mức xếp hạng cao nhất A cho Trung Quốc, Thái Lan; và mức A- cho Thụy Sỹ, Hàn Quốc, Malaysia và Ả-rập Xê út.

Ngược lại, Hy Lạp bị xếp hạng ở mức E (rất yếu), trong khi Portugal, Pakistan, Tây Ban Nha và Venezuela nhận mức xếp hạng D+.

Ngoài Mỹ, Weiss còn dành mức xếp hạng C cho một số quốc gia khác như Nhật Bản, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Estonia và Mexico.

Nợ công của Mỹ đã tăng vọt trong các năm gần đây khi Chính phủ tiến hành giải cứu hệ thống tài chính và sử dụng các chương trình kích thích khổng lồ để đưa nền kinh tế thoát khỏi cuộc suy thoái tồi tệ nhất kể từ Cuộc Đại suy thoái.

Theo nhận định của ông Sean Egan, Chủ tịch của Công ty Xếp hạng tín nhiệm Egan-Jones Ratings thì động thái của Weiss là nhằm thu hút sự chú ý.

Phạm Thị Phước (Theo MarketWatch)

29/04 Sony faces global legal action over breach; shares fall

REUTERS

2011/04/29PrintShare Article
TOKYO/WILMINGTON, Delaware--Sony Corp could face legal action across the globe after it belatedly disclosed a security breach of its popular PlayStation Network, infuriating gamers and sending the firm's shares down 5 percent in Tokyo on April 28.

Sony shut down the network on April 19 after discovering the breach, one of the biggest online data infiltrations ever, but did not tell the public about the theft until April 26.

In the United States, several members of Congress seized on the breach, in which hackers stole names, addresses and possibly credit card details from 77 million users. One U.S. law firm filed a lawsuit in California on behalf of consumers.

"Gamers are angry that Sony's CEO hasn't come out to explain the situation and investors are disappointed over the company's corporate governance," said Michael Wang, manager of overseas funds at Prudential Financials in Taipei, which owns shares in Sony.

Sony's PlayStation Network, a service that produces an estimated $500 million in annual revenues, provides access to online games, movies and TV shows. Nine out of 10 of PlayStation's users are based in the United States or Europe.

Gamers could ditch Sony and analysts said people looking to buy a video game console could steer toward Microsoft Corp's Xbox, which has its own popular online network.

"I am outraged that my personal information may have been accessed by hackers," said Rich Chiang, a PlayStation and Xbox user in Shanghai.

Security experts said Sony would need to account for the loss of business -- as well as damage to its brand -- when it tallies up the cost. Other costs include notifying customers of the attack and bringing in experts to cleanse its network.

Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, said the theft could cost Sony more than $1.5 billion, or an average of $20 for each of the 77 million customers whose data was potentially compromised. Poneman's firm specializes in securing information on computer networks.

Sony said the delay in notifying the public was needed to conduct a forensic investigation but it is fast becoming a public relations nightmare akin to Toyota Motor's bungled response to a giant vehicle recall last year, fuelling criticism of corporate Japan's standards of disclosure.

Neither Sony CEO Howard Stringer nor Kazuo Hirai, who was appointed to the company's No. 2 position last month after building up Sony's networked services, have commented publicly.

Sony shares closed down 4.5 percent after falling more than 5 percent at one stage, while the broad market rose 1.6 percent. The stock has now lost more than 8 percent this week.

Some fund managers said the impact might be contained.

"Shares of Sony have already reached the low since the earthquake so I think further downside is limited. Investors who buy Sony are buying on its growth in PlayStation. Gamers usually will not stop playing just because a single incident," said Prudential Financial's Wang.

In the United States, attorneys general, who act as consumer advocates, had begun investigating the matter or reviewing it with staff in several states, including in Iowa, Connecticut, Florida and Massachusetts, according to their offices.

U.S. regulators could get involved as well. The Federal Trade Commission has been known to pursue companies that failed to safeguard consumer data. It could investigate if it determines Sony failed to tell its customers about the company's privacy policies.

A spokeswoman for the agency declined to comment.

Sony reported the breach to the FBI's cybercrimes unit in San Diego, which is investigating, a person familiar with the probe told Reuters. The person was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Late on April 27, Rothken Law Firm filed a lawsuit on behalf of an individual plaintiff named Kristopher Johns against Sony in the Northern District of California court.

"This suit seeks to redress Sony's failure to adequately provide service to PlayStation consoles and PlayStation Network," the lawyers for the plaintiff said in a court filing.

The plaintiff has requested the court to certify this case as a class action and has also sought unspecified monetary damages, according to the filing.

Sony did not return a call in the United States seeking comment.

In Britain, a government watchdog has launched an investigation of the incident.

Britain's Information Commissioner's Office said it had contacted Sony and was investigating whether it violated laws that require it to safeguard personal information. The commissioner's investigation would depend in part on whether Sony stored user information in Britain.

Indeed, Sony may come under the toughest scrutiny from non-U.S. regulators, which have stricter consumer privacy laws.

"European countries are going to go crazy and be all over this," said Dan Burk, a professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law. "They are absolutely obsessed about companies holding personal information."

29/04 The ECB’s Secret Bailout Strategy

Hans-Werner Sinn

2011-04-29

The ECB’s Secret Bailout Strategy

MUNICH – Why did Greece, Ireland, and Portugal have to seek shelter under the European Union’s rescue umbrella, and why is Spain a potential candidate?

For many, the answer is obvious: international markets no longer want to finance the “GIPS.” But that is only half true. In fact, international markets have not financed any of them to a considerable extent for the past three years; the European Central Bank has. The so-called “Target” accounts, hitherto ignored by the media, show that the ECB has been much more involved in rescue operations than is commonly known.

But now the ECB no longer wants to do it, and is urging eurozone members to step in.

Normally, a country’s current-account deficit (trade deficit minus transfers from other countries) is financed with foreign private capital. In a currency union, however, central-bank credit may play this role if private capital flows are insufficient. This is what happened in the eurozone when the interbank market first broke down in mid-2007.

The GIPS’ own central banks started to lend newly printed money to their private banks, and this money was then used to finance the current account deficit. These funds went to the exporting countries, where they circulated as part of normal transactions. The exporting countries’ central banks responded by reducing their emissions of fresh money to be lent to the domestic economy. In effect, central-bank money lending in exporting countries, above all in Germany, was diverted to the GIPS.

The ECB’s policy was not inflationary, because the aggregate stock of central-bank money in the eurozone was unaffected. But, as GIPS’ central-bank lending came at the expense of central-bank lending within the eurozone’s exporting countries, the policy amounted to a forced capital export from these countries to the GIPS.

The amount of the ECB’s “replacement lending” is shown by the so-called Target2 account, which measures the deficit or surplus of a country’s financial transactions with other countries. As the account includes international payments for both trade in goods and financial claims, a deficit in a country’s Target account indicates foreign borrowing via the ECB, whereas a surplus denotes foreign lending via the ECB.

The balance is not reported on the ECB’s balance sheet, since it is zero in the aggregate, but it does show up on the respective balance sheets of the national central banks as interest-bearing claims against, and liabilities to, the ECB system. Until mid-2007, the Target accounts were close to zero, but since then, they have grown by about €100 billion per year.

For example, the Bundesbank’s Target claims ballooned from €5 billion in 2006 to €323 billion by March 2011. The counterpart to these claims were the GIPS’ liabilities, which had grown to about €340 billion by the end of last year. Interestingly, the GIPS’ cumulative current-account deficits from 2008 through 2010 were of roughly the same order of magnitude – €365 billion, to be precise.

Had the ECB failed to finance these deficits, the GIPS would have had a hard time finding the money to pay for their net imports. If they succeeded at all, high interest rates would have induced them to tighten their belts, and their current-account deficits, which in the case of Greece and Portugal exceeded 10% of GDP, would have diminished.

One should not criticize the ECB for propping up the GIPS’ current accounts during the global crisis. Unconventional measures were necessary to prevent their economies from collapsing. But it should be clear that this was not a sui generis monetary policy; it was a bailout. Now that the world economy has largely recovered from the crisis, it is time to end this policy – not least because the ECB is running out of ammunition.

By the end of last year, the aggregate stock of central-bank money in the euro area was €1.07 trillion euros, and €380 billion euros was already absorbed by ECB credit to the GIPS. So financing a continued GIPS current-account deficit of about €100 billion a year would consume the entire stock of base money within another six or seven years.

To exit this policy, the ECB wants the EU’s Luxembourg rescue facility, EFSF or ESM to take over, and some countries even call for the issuance of eurobonds. But this would simply prolong community financing of the GIPS’ current-account deficits, now in its fourth year, for another couple of years. In the end, either the euro will collapse, or a transfer union will be established in Europe, in which the current-account deficits will be financed with inter-country donations.

It would be better if the EU kept the Luxembourg fund for real emergency measures, and if the ECB instructed its member institutions in the GIPS to demand significantly better collateral for their lending operations. Tight national caps on Target balances could provide the right incentive to comply. Such a cap would not eliminate current-account deficits, but it would reduce deficits to the flow of private capital willing to finance them.

Setting a cap on Target accounts is a fundamentally more appropriate policy to keep current-account deficits in check than the wage policies contemplated by the new Pact for the Euro. Wage policies are appropriate only for centrally planned economies.

Perhaps the GIPS should ponder how Italy handled itself. Even though it had to pay interest premiums and was running a current-account deficit, Mario Draghi (the leading contender to take over the ECB this autumn) kept his central bank’s lending under tight control throughout the crisis. Although it must have been sorely tempted, Italy did not accumulate Target deficits. It opted for virtuous abstention.

Hans-Werner Sinn is Professor of Economics and Public Finance, University of Munich, and President of the Ifo Institute.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.
www.project-syndicate.org

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