Fitch voerde vanmiddag een onverwachte kredietverlaging door op Japan. Het ratingbureau is niet te spreken over de aanzwellende megalomane schuldenberg van 240% van het BBP! AA wordt nu A+, waarbij de outlook neerwaarts wordt bijgesteld door Fitch:

Fitch Ratings-Hong Kong-22 May 2012: Fitch Ratings has downgraded Japan’s Long-Term Foreign and Local Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) to ‘A+’ from ‘AA’ and ‘AA-‘ respectively. The Outlooks on both IDRs are Negative. The Country Ceiling is downgraded to ‘AA+’ from ‘AAA’. The Short-Term Foreign Currency IDR is affirmed at ‘F1+’. “The downgrades and Negative Outlooks reflect growing risks for Japan’s sovereign credit profile as a result of high and rising public debt ratios,” said Andrew Colquhoun, Head of Asia-Pacific Sovereigns at Fitch. “The country’s fiscal consolidation plan looks leisurely relative even to other fiscally-challenged high-income countries, and implementation is subject to political risk.” Japan’s gross general government debt is projected to hit 239% of GDP by end-2012, by far the highest for any Fitch-rated sovereign. This debt ratio would also have risen 61pp since the global financial crisis. This compares with a median of 39pp for OECD economies and 8pp for ‘A’ range sovereigns. Japan is less of an outlier when account is taken of its large pile of sovereign financial assets (worth about 80% of GDP on Fitch’s calculations), but net indebtedness is still rising strongly.