Credit Rating, U.s. Credit Rating Downgrade | featured news

Hewlett-Packard Co. had its credit ratings placed on review for possible downgrade by Moody’s Investors Service after the company decided to keep its personal computer business.

Securities regulators have sent subpoenas to hedge funds and other trading firms as it probes possible insider trading before the U.S. government's long-term credit rating was cut last month, the Wall Street Journal said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Fitch Ratings said Tuesday it will keep its rating on U.S. debt at the highest grade, AAA, and issued a "stable" outlook, meaning it expects the rating to stay there.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has asked rating agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) to disclose which employees knew of its decision to downgrade U.S. debt before it was announced last week, the Financial Times said, citing people familiar with the matter.

Standard & Poor's, whose unprecedented downgrade of U.S. debt triggered a worldwide stocks sell-off, is pushing back against a U.S. government proposal that would require credit raters to disclose "significant errors" in how they calculate their ratings.

China and other governments have little choice but to keep buying U.S. Treasury debt to store swelling foreign reserves even after Washington’s credit rating was cut by Standard & Poor’s.

The downgrading of U.S. government bonds by Standard & Poor’s ensures that the 2012 election will be fought on the battlefield of debt, as Electoral College math begins mingling with dire economic figures.

Wall Street stocks plummeted Monday morning on the first-ever downgrade of the United States' credit rating, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunging as much as 380 points in the first hour of trading.

Former White House adviser David Axelrod on Sunday pinned responsibility for the recent U.S. economic downgrade on the Tea Party movement, arguing that the group's political "brinkmanship" during debt ceiling negotiations "brought us to the brink of a default" -- and that, subsequently, "this is essentially a Tea Party downgrade."