RATINGS AGENCIES
March on others’ advice, not our own needs, is at our peril
The use of the outside arbiter to bolster economic arguments is designed to evade debate among competing local interests, writes Trudi Makhaya
There is a pamphlet on the website of the Treasury that seeks to explain headline sovereign credit ratings in layman’s terms. It uses, as an explanatory device, descriptions of how a bank would treat a country as if it were an individual customer, at different points on the ratings scale. Banks will not only lend you money at a very low interest rate if you are AAA rated, the reader is informed, but they will also offer you wine, tea, juice or anything you want if you enjoy such a rating. As you go down the scale, the interest rates are higher and the catering more basic. If you are deep into junk status, in the C ranks, it is only mashonisas who are willing to lend you money at punitively high interest rates. The pamphlet, an accessible and humorous guide to ratings, speaks to the way the assessments of credit ratings agencies have made their way into mainstream consciousness. It hasn’t always been so.Few South Africans can tell you when the country established itself as investment...
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