Eurozone crisis live: Will the credit ratings agencies spoil Christmas?
It is the last working day before Christmas but will S&P take the joyeux out of noel and downgrade France's AAA rating?
9.20am: Talking of boosting consumer spending, some good news from Ireland too where retail sales have shown their first year-on-year increase since March 2008, climbing by 0.68% in December according to the Retail Excellence Ireland report.
REI welcomed the increase but said the figures were disappointing once you take into account last year's bad weather:
shoppers remain cautious, are buying down and shopping around.
8.56am: Signs of an interesting economic shift in Germany where GDP climbed 0.5% in the third quarter, largely due to a jump in consumer spending. This is a good thing for economies such as the UK's, which need to boost exports and need major exporters such as Germany to turn on the consumption taps in order to buy their goods. China is under the same pressure.
Rolf Burkl of market researcher GfK told the Wall Street Journal Europe that German consumers may be changing their behaviour from the days when they cut spending as the spectre of a downturn loomed.
Willingness to buy went down and willingness to save went up. Now we have the opposite behaviour.
8.39am: France has emerged as the world's "most pessimistic" country in terms of economic outlook, according to a poll published today, which shows its lowest score for more than three decades.
Ireland came second and Austria, which has just had its top-notch sovereign debt rating upheld and competes superbly with Germany on the Christmas market front, came third. Characteristically rigorous self-! analysis from the home of Freud.
The poll dwelled on France's total economic downer and Europe's 'despair':
Even in 1978, after the second oil crisis that called into question an entire economic system, the French have never shown themselves as pessimistic as today. Europe leads in despair, followed by North America. The rest of the world, lead by Africa, remains mostly optimistic.
Indeed, Nigeria's fiscal mojo has not been lost. It was found to be the most optimistic of the 51 countries surveyed, followed by Vietnam and Ghana.
8.28am: The markets have opened across Europe and the FTSE 100 was up 0.7% in early trading, with France's CAC 40 up 1% and Germany's DAX up 0.9%. A Paris-based trader told Reuters that reassuring economic data from the US including new claims for unemployment dropping to their lowest level in three and a half years.
The macro data from the US is helping us forget about the debt crisis, but that shouldn't last very long, and there's still a big risk of getting a few credit downgrades in Europe before the end of the year.
8.19am: In other news today:
French Q3 GDP growth has been revised down by 0.1% to 0.3%.
Barclays has lost tens of millions of pounds from wrongheaded bets on the copper and aluminium markets.
Blacks Leisure, the struggling retailer, has made a frank admission that it is worthless.
And instead of writing to Santa next year perhaps we should try China. A Chinese sovereign wealth fund is about to receive a further $50bn. Watch out Man City.
8.05am: Moody's has maintained Austria's AAA rating but warned that the eurozone crisis still poses a serious threat. It said:
Austria's AAA ratings currently carry a stable outlook but this increasingly becomes dependent on a resolution of the wider euro zone crisis which has begun to negatively affect core euro meber states like Austria
Will France get the same message from S&P?
7.54am: Morning everyone. It is the last working day before Christmas and whether we progress serenely into the festive period will be down to the credit ratings agencies. Will S&P take the joyeux out of noel and downgrade France's AAA rating? If they do, French foreign minister Alain Jupp has indicated that his government won't go postale on the UK after the recent bout of macroeconomic needle.
Last night saw a new credit downgrade in Europe, for Slovenia, as Moody's cut the country's rating by one notch from AA3 (the 4th highest) to A1 (the fifth highest), blaming the eurozone crisis for the tough funding environment buffeting the Slovenian government.
In the UK, the energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, has warned that the UK could become "semi-detached" from Europe following David Cameron's treaty veto. Read the interview in the Independent here.
Bank of England boss Sir Mervyn King added that the European Systemic Risk Board, which he heads, "have not discussed the possibility of a country leaving the eurozone." Which all seems a bit 'I see no ships'. Still, nearly Christmas.
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