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Breaking Greece’s Back: Another S&P Downgrade?

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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The capital markets are already suspicious that Greece will not be able to close a bond support deal with other eurozone countries and the IMF. Ratings agency Fitch told Greece that it needed a transaction with its neighbors to create an air of credibility around the nation’s sovereign debt.

S&P became much more aggressive than Fitch as it told Greece that its status with the credit agency could change. According to Reuters, “Greece is at risk of a rating downgrade if high borrowing costs persist and the government does not manage to address the consequent deviation from its deficit-cutting programme.”

Greece is now may move into technical default on some of its notes with the next few weeks, if the expected aid is not forthcoming. The nation could choose to leave the eurozone alliance in the hope that it can devalue its currency. Or, the large, rich nations like German may elect to pressure Greece out of the group so that it is not forced to put German assets into a risk ridden situation.

Either way, Greece is in a death spiral.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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