Credit Rating

WASHINGTON - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said Tuesday he did not know if the bruising debt-limit battle between Republicans and Democrats would harm America's triple-A credit rating but said he feared "world confidence was damaged by this spectacle. " In an interview with ABC News, Geithner said the credit rating was "not my judgment to make. " But he also said, "This is, in some ways, a judgment on the capacity of Congress to act. " He acknowledged that the bill passed by the House on Monday and the Senate on Tuesday would not immediately relieve high unemployment.

The Philadelphia School District received an improved credit rating from Moody's Investors Service this week that will enable it to obtain lower interest rates on bond sales, district officials said yesterday. The lower interest costs mean that the district - and city taxpayers - will save millions of dollars on future school debt, the officials said. Irvin R. Davis, the district's managing director of financial administration, said that the district learned late Monday that Moody's had upgraded the district's credit rating from BA to BA1. In a statement issued yesterday explaining the upgrading, Moody's said, "Positive operating results have been achieved through improved financial management practices.

As Phoenixville Borough Council continues to haggle over a proposed 40.5 percent water-rate increase, a national investment rating agency has downgraded the Water Department's credit rating. In a report dated Jan. 24, Moody's Investors Services cited "failure to implement timely rate increases" as having "substantially weakened financial performance" of the borough-owned water system. The credit rating was dropped from Baa to Ba. The investment ratings are an assessment of ability to repay debt.

WASHINGTON - An unexpected warning by a major credit-rating agency on America's soaring debt shocked global investors and threatened still wider consequences for the U.S. economy, even as a new sense of realism emerged in the deadlock between President Obama and congressional Republicans over fiscal policy. The warning came in the form of a lowering of the outlook by the agency in its assessment of the deficit problem. Standard & Poor's said Monday that there was a 1-in-3 chance that it would lower the Treasury Department's now-sterling "AAA" credit rating on U.S. debt in the next two years.

Camden County has improved its credit rating a notch on Wall Street, and the upgrade will save taxpayers $300,000 in financing costs in a pending bond deal, Freeholder Director Jeffrey Nash announced yesterday. At a news conference to tout the improvement, county officials said they persuaded Standard & Poor's - one of the top-ranking financial rating services - to raise the county's bond rating from A-minus to A. The rating had remained A-minus since 1989. The rating makes Camden County's bonds more attractive to investors and therefore makes the county eligible for lower interest on longterm borrowing.

WASHINGTON - Credit rating agency Standard & Poor's on Friday downgraded the United States' credit rating for the first time in the history of the ratings. The credit-rating agency said that it was cutting the country's top AAA rating by one notch to AA-plus. The credit agency said that it was making the move because the deficit-reduction plan passed by Congress on Tuesday did not go far enough to stabilize the country's debt situation. A source familiar with the discussions said that the Obama administration believes the S&P's analysis contained "deep and fundamental flaws.

Standard & Poor's downgrade of the nation's credit rating is a flawed conclusion from a discredited messenger. Rather than adding a helpful push to get the nation on a more sustainable financial footing, S&P's misguided judgment call may actually increase the risk of harm to the nation's economy. There was not, and is not, any risk that the United States won't pay its bonded debts as promised. Even if Congress hadn't raised the debt ceiling, the government would have paid what it owes to investors.

LISBON, Portugal - Portugal's efforts to climb out of its economic crisis suffered a double setback yesterday as its credit rating was downgraded to junk status and a major strike gave voice to broad public outrage over austerity measures that have squeezed living standards. Portugal's deepening plight underlined Europe's difficulties in finding a way out of the continent's government debt crisis, which has recently shown alarming signs of spreading to bigger nations, most notably Italy.

Philadelphia's credit rating has dropped again, this time more a dive than a tumble. Standard & Poor's Corp. yesterday downgraded the city's credit to nearly the bottom of its scale, warning investors Philadelphia may have to default on its bonds. The Wall Street rating agency, which had seemed sympathetic to the city's financial plight in recent years, cited the city's failure last week to sell $375 million in temporary loan notes. "It is now evident that without access to the market, the city will not only be short of cash to meet routine day-to-day operations, but that its ability to completely meet current debt service . . . may be adversely affected," Standard & Poor's said.

The Rendell administration got a tip of the hat and the state fiscal oversight board received a salute from another Wall Street credit agency yesterday. Standard & Poor's gave an "A-minus" - or investment-grade - rating to the $473.8 million bond issue that the Pennsylvania Intergovernmental Cooperation Authority is floating to help save the city from financial ruin. The grade was the highest of the three major credit rating agencies that examined the PICA bond issue. Meanwhile, Standard & Poor's also upgraded the city's overall credit worthiness from a junk-bond status of "CCC" to a "B. " That means that instead of considering the city on the brink of default, the agency now considers it as having a "greater vulnerability to default" but with the ability to pay its debts, barring a downturn in the economy.

WASHINGTON - The political world absorbed a chilling message Wednesday from the fall of Washington icon Sen. Richard G. Lugar: Rabid partisanship is popular, especially in Republican primaries, and cutting deals with political opponents is not. Lugar's defeat will have ripple effects nationally in this year's elections and in the Senate, where he's served since 1977. Anyone looking for common ground in a deeply divided Congress is likely to be more intimidated now. This month alone, lawmakers have failed to reach accords on matters that usually find consensus: highway construction, student-loan interest rates, and help for victims of domestic violence.

Montgomery County is still rich. Still a corporate center. Still a place with relatively low property taxes, by suburban standards. But it's a little less perfect than it used to be, according to Wall Street. On Tuesday, Fitch Ratings cut the credit rating on bonds Montco wants to refinance to AA+, down a notch from its former top-level AAA. In a report by analyst Eric Friedman, Fitch blamed it on the "sizable decline in the county's general-fund balance following several years of large operating deficits," to less than 7 percent of its $400 million-plus budget — less than a AAA community should have on hand to cover emergencies, unless it cuts more services or boosts taxes.

Government-owned, taxpayer-funded trash-to-energy plants in Harrisburg and Camden County have fallen many millions below the financial projections of the people who sold them years ago. It's not that ugly in Montgomery County, but even there, towns are burning less trash than expected: Moody's Investors Service this week cut its credit rating for Montgomery County Industrial Development Authority's $34 million 2002 bond issue, which is...

Crozer Keystone Health System in Delaware County is offering an early-retirement package to more than 500 of its 7,000 employees with the goal of trimming 325 full-time-equivalent positions. So far, 150 employees have accepted the offer, health system spokeswoman Kathy Scullin said Thursday. The deadline is April 23. Scullin said the number of layoffs needed would not be known until then. Scullin said that Crozer, the largest employer in Delaware County, must reduce the workforce at its five hospitals because of a marked shift from traditional inpatient stays to shorter-term and lower-paying "observation" stays, a widespread problem in the hospital industry.

Your personal credit rating, to a great extent, determines what loans you'll qualify for and the interest you'll pay. Check these sites to find out where you stand, and how to fix credit problems. All's fair to Fair Isaac. Fair Issac Corp. (FICO) does the math behind the credit scores sold by consumer-reporting agencies Equifax, Trans Union, and Experian. Its site includes this page on fixing or improving your credit rating and has a lot of links and tips, the most important of which may be to force discipline into your credit use and to be suspicious of quick-credit-repair offers.

Could the U.S. sovereign debt rating be cut again? Absolutely. Not only that, but Europe's strongest creditor, Germany, could end up with a weaker credit rating after footing the bill for the current Eurocrisis. How good are credit ratings these days? Somewhat better than they used to be. That's because mainstream agencies like Moody's Investor Service, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch Ratings, are trying to live down their pasts, in which they underestimated the perils of too much housing and mortgage derivative debt and abetted the financial crisis of 2007-08.

ZAGREB, Croatia - Croatians voted Sunday in favor of joining the European Union despite a poor turnout for the referendum, a sign of how much the debt-stricken 27-nation bloc has lost its appeal within countries aspiring to join. Croatia's state referendum commission said that with nearly 100 percent of the ballot counted, about 66 percent of those who took part in the referendum voted in favor. About 31 percent were against, while the rest of the ballots were invalid. An estimated 47 percent of eligible voters took part, illustrating voters' apathy toward the EU. "The people are obviously tired," Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic said.

PARIS - Italy and France sought to present a united front Friday as grim economic news threatened to push Europe back into recession and exacerbate a spiraling debt crisis. European leaders are scrambling again to stem the march of the crisis, which pushed the euro to a 16-month low against the U.S. dollar on Friday, drove Italy's borrowing rates to unsustainable levels, and is threatening France's prized AAA credit rating. With the debt jitters regarding core economies, economic indicators show that even powerhouse Germany has not been spared.

In a nation that runs on borrowed money, a black mark on your credit rating can halt your forward progress. This applies to towns, as well as people and businesses. But not always. In Pennsylvania and New Jersey, every square inch of real estate is part of a local municipality and a school district, and probably one or more additional local authorities with the power to borrow money from investors, in the name of the people. During the fat years, both parties cheerfully committed taxpayers to long-term projects they will still be paying for when ex-mayors are decades into their state-funded pensions.

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services boosted its credit rating of Citizens Bank of Pennsylvania to "A/A-1" from "A-/A-2. " The upgrade also applied to RBS Citizens N.A., which has branches in New England and in the Midwest. Both banks are owned by Citizens Financial Group, of Providence, R.I., which is a subsidiary of the Royal Bank of Scotland Group p.l.c. S&P cited Citizens' improved profitability this year and the stabilization of Citizens' loan book, which includes $24 billion worth of home-equity loans from areas where it has branches.