Almost a year after Standard & Poor's downgrade, Moody's is also putting its hand on France's rating: it obviously does so downwards, cutting the score from “triple A” to “Aa1” and confirming François Hollande's negative outlook for the country.
The news immediately triggered reactions from the political world which, as happened just a week ago with the cover-shock of the Economist (which perhaps in some way paved the way for Moody's decision), did not take it well at all. Although this time more than anger, minimization prevails. “De-dra-ma-ti-ser” (play down), he writes Le Figaro, the only one of the major newspapers to dedicate the opening of the site to the story: for others, the main news is the appointment of Jean-François Copé as secretary of the UMP, Sarkozy's party. Le Figaro, articulating the syllables, thus defines the line chosen by Paris, which in fact only had the Ministry of the Economy comment on the news, deliberately keeping President Hollande and Prime Minister Ayrault out of the matter.
So it was Minister Pierre Moscovici, also him, already in the eye of the storm last week for an interview with the Financial Times on the Economist case, who spoke. “It is the fault of the mistakes of the past, of the situation we inherited from our predecessors: loss of competitiveness, weak growth, growing deficit”. The head of the Bercy department therefore unloads the blame on Sarkozy's management, even if he takes note of Moody's decision underlining that “the French economy is large and diversified, our debt remains one of the most liquid and secure in the Eurozone and we are putting necessary reforms are in place.
Meanwhile, in the morning the news of a possible further rating downgrade arrived, according to what was declared by Dietmar Hornung, an analyst at Moody's, to the Reuters agency. Hornung also judged the growth forecasts of the transalpine GDP in 2013 (+0,8%) too optimistic.
Despite this, however, the consequences on the markets are limited for now: this morning the Paris Stock Exchange opened very slightly lower (-0,27%). Indeed, according to all the analysts interviewed by the French press, Moody's decision was widely expected and already absorbed by the financial markets.
