The head of Dagong Global Capital, China’s largest ratings agency, warned Saturday that it may downgrade US debt for the third time because of Washington’s inability to pay down the deficit, The Guardian reported. Dagong Global chairman, Guan Jianzhong, said in an interview with al-Jazeera that a ratings cut is almost inevitable since quantitative easing is among the only options available to the US economy. Dagong Global, a subsidiary of the central bank and the only Chinese agency to issue ratings on foreign sovereign debt, downgraded the US rating from AA to A+ in 2010, then downgraded it again to A in August. Only a few days later, Standard & Poor’s also downgraded US debt. In addition to making US borrowing more expensive, any further downgrading of US debt would be a matter of concern for Beijing, which owns around one-third of all foreign-held US securities.
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