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Japan's Fiscal Situation Worsens but Credit Rating Unchanged

By ETFguide March 15, 2011, 12:29:52 PM EDT

Japan's 9.0 earthquake, continuous aftershocks and subsequent nuclear crisis will have no immediate impact on the crippled country's credit score. According to a Bloomberg report, Standard & Poor's sees no current effect or need to adjust Japan's AA- credit rating. Likewise, Moody's Investors Service agreed that confidence in Japan's fiscal soundness has not reached a tipping point.

Are credit rating agencies repeating the same mistakes they made with the U.S. sub-prime mortgage disaster? Could this be another instance in where they've massively under-estimated or under-stated the actual risk of credit defaults by the highly leveraged Japan? Or perhaps, rating agencies are avoiding immediate downgrades in order to prevent a run on Japanese bonds, could that be it? Whatever the case, major credit ratings appear to be on track for another late arrival - this time to an Asian-styled sovereign debt crisis. 

Illustrating Japan's growing credit dislocations, around half a dozen Japanese companies now carry a higher credit rating than long-term Japanese government bonds . Put another way, there's diminishing faith in Japan's ability to finance and pay its debts. Approximately 90% of Japan's public debt is domestically owned.

Japanese stocks (NYSEArca: EWJ) fell 10.55% in trading while the Japanese Yen (NYSEArca: FXY) rose. The ProShares UltraShort MSCI Japan ETF (NYSEArca: EWV), which aims for double daily inverse performance to Japanese stocks has jumped almost 18% over the past two days. 




The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The NASDAQ OMX Group, Inc.


This article appears in: Investing, ETFs

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