NOT CHECKING YOUR WORK.

NOT CHECKING YOUR WORK. With the European debt markets in turmoil, Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services threw a match on the gasoline yesterday by mistakenly announcing that it had downgraded France’s debt from triple-A. Then, a couple hours later, it announced that this was all a mistake. Apparently it was an accident. S &P said that it was a “technical error” and that it was “investigating the cause of the error.” This Reuters article says that the mistake “contributed to the worst day for France’s government bonds since before the euro was launched in 1999.” An article in the Wall Street Journal (November 11) by Jeanette Neumann and Mia Lamar says that: “As word spread Thursday about the message, the euro weakened against the dollar, U.S. stocks slipped and French bond prices fell, pushing yields higher. Cash reversed course, flooding into U. S. Treasurys and German government bonds.” Then the S&P “Never mind” message went out and things calmed down.