24 October 2006

ACT keeps AAA credit rating

| IBN News
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Credit agency Standard and Poor’s has maintained the territory’s a AAA credit rating.

Predictably, chief minister Jon Stanhope is pretty happy with the news: he says it shows the territory is on the right track.

But Canberrans and the opposition may not feel the same way.

The last budget was not well-received, because it introduced lots of new taxes and announced heavy public service job losses, including teaching positions at the 40 schools slated for closure.

[ED: The ABC reports Mr Stanhope is taking this as a vote of confidence in the tough measures the Government took in the last budget.]

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It’s a typo: what it really should have said was that “the credit agency Sub-Standard and Piss-Poor has maintained…….”.

Perhaps the name of the organisation refers to the level of service they provide?

Or it could just mean that the ACT Govt agreed to pay Standard & Poors to do the credit rating. I recall reading an article on these guys – they basically approach governments, publicly listed company’s etc. and say “We’re going to do a credit rating on your organisation – if you pay us a lot of money we will be able to send in a host of highly experienced staff to examine every aspect of your finances and come to a really accurate conclusion – if you don’t we’ll have to do the assessment as an in-house desktop job using the most conservative assumptions and it won’t really be an accurate reflection of your rating but we’d feel obliged to put it out into the market place anyway.” It’s a scam, little more.

It really just means they think the ACT will pay its debts. As it should. And will.

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