Chancellor George Osborne has defended continued spending cuts following a warning that the country's top credit rating may be downgraded.
There's no word, yet, from the major ratings agencies, whether Washington has done enough to hold on to America's top credit rating.
The implication is that we would have lost the top credit rating even sooner, had Labour been in charge, with a somewhat looser approach to borrowing.
He has shrugged off the loss of Britain's top credit rating, but the questions about what, if anything, he can do to kick-start growth are going to be harder to shake.
The business is lost because big banking groups can use their strong balance sheets to offer loans and other products requiring a top credit rating, along with the usual investment-banking services.
This means that if France were to lose its top credit rating the latest fear in the markets the EFSF would lose a big chunk of its lending capacity (or its AAA rating).
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The overall share of people expressing trust in basic institutions rose in the survey from the 2012 edition, to 57 percent from 51 percent, as trust bounced back from the hit it took from the European debt crisis and disputes between President Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress over the U.S. debt limit, which caused the U.S. to losing its top credit rating.
France has been given a warning over its top AAA credit rating by Moody's, one of the main rating agencies.
The UK continues to risk losing its top AAA credit rating if it does not reduce its debt, a senior figure at Fitch Ratings has told the BBC.
Earlier on Friday, Fitch kept the French government's top AAA credit rating, making it the only major ratings agency left to say the country deserves to be among the world's most creditworthy borrowers.
If the government loses its top AAA credit rating - as many expect - that could also reverse some of the "safe haven" flows into sterling that we have seen over the past few years.
George Osborne would say that UK in general would have done worse, if he had not restored confidence in the UK's budget position (ignoring, for the moment, the fear that the UK will lose its top AAA credit rating this year, for all his efforts).
Fitch said after Mr Osborne's announcement that the government's policy framework had been a key factor helping the UK to hold on to to its top AAA credit rating, and the loss of the debt rule had weakened both the coalition's credibility and the rating.
Even mighty GE, which still boasted a top-notch credit rating at the time, resorted to extreme measures.
Britain's top finance officials in recent months have played down the importance of the country's top-notch credit rating.
Six months before a tight presidential election, Mr Sarkozy seems to be driven by one overriding objective: to preserve France's top-tier credit rating.
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And let's ignore the fact that the U.S. government can literally print the money to service Washington's Treasury debt--after all, in the inflationary 1970s the real value of a U.S. Treasury bond plummeted and Washington's top-notch credit rating was unaffected.
Under normal circumstances, investors do not have to be concerned about credit risk, when the debt issuer is a government enjoying a top rating by credit agencies like France, Germany, US, and Japan.
But the news of Mr Greenberg's departure has put pressure on AIG's top-notch (AAA) credit rating, much vaunted in company advertising to distinguish it from competitors.
Credit rating agencies were giving top-notch ratings to what were essentially toxic assets that banks would then turn around and sell to investors.
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This follows after credit rating agency Fitch warned last month that the UK could lose the top rating if the government does not reduce its sovereign debt.
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Think of credit rating as a simple grading system where the top students perform the best on tests (making money) and those at the bottom are the biggest risk for dropping out of school (defaulting).
The Fitch credit ratings agency has joined Moody's and put the UK's top AAA rating on "negative outlook".
The fact that President Bush has become seized with the Soviets' bad credit rating is all the more striking given that he has recently made Ed Hewett his top Soviet specialist on the National Security Council staff.
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