Surveillance Report for Sovereign
Credit Rating
The United States of
America
Sovereign Credit
Rating:
Local currency/outlook:
A+/negative
Foreign currency/outlook: A+/negative
Rating
date: November, 2010
Analyst: LU Sinan, DU Mingyan
Rating
History:
Local currency/outlook:
AA/negative
Foreign currency/outlook: AA/negative
Rating
date: June, 2010
Dagong has downgraded the local and foreign currency long term sovereign
credit rating of the United States of America (hereinafter referred to as
“United States” ) from “AA” to “A+“, which reflects its deteriorating debt
repayment capability and drastic decline of the government’s intention of debt
repayment.
The serious defects in the United States economic development
and management model will lead to the long-term recession of its national
economy, fundamentally lowering the national solvency. The new round of
quantitative easing monetary policy adopted by the Federal Reserve has brought
about an obvious trend of depreciation of the U.S. dollar, and the continuation
and deepening of credit crisis in the U.S. Such a move entirely encroaches on
the interests of the creditors, indicating the decline of the U.S. government’s
intention of debt repayment. Analysis shows that the crisis confronting the U.S.
cannot be ultimately resolved through currency depreciation. On the contrary, it
is likely that an overall crisis might be triggered by the U.S. government’s
policy to continuously depreciate the U.S. dollar against the will of
creditors.
The rating bases for downgrading the sovereign credit rating of
the United States by Dagong are as follows:
I. The U.S. government has not introspected on
the question of the development and management model of the national economy
from the global strategic perspective, which makes it very difficult for the
U.S. to fundamentally change the passive situation of economic
development.
After the outbreak of the financial crisis, the United States government
has adopted a series of policies and measures aiming at rescuing the crisis and
recovering the economy, such as: the government has purchased bad assets
directly, injected capital to financial institutions and entity enterprises
seriously hit by the crisis, increased investment in social security, education
and energy, cut the tax rate of low and middle income families, and adjusted
financial supervision, etc.. Looking at the effects, the U.S. government's
efforts have achieved little success, falling short of initial expectations. The
credit crunch is still proceeding and even deepening. The development course of
credit crisis has shown a chart of debt crisis - economic crisis - monetary
crisis - overall crisis. Currently, the U.S. credit crisis has developed into
the monetary crisis phase. In order to rescue the national crisis, the U.S.
government resorted to the extreme economic policy of depreciating the U.S.
dollar at all costs and this fully exposes the deep-rooted problem in the
development and the management model of national economy. It would be difficult
for the U.S. to find the correct path to revive the U.S. economy should the U.S.
government fail to understand the source of the credit crunch and the
development law of a modern credit economy, and stick to the mindset of
traditional economic management model, which indicates that the U.S. economic
and social development will enter a long-term recession phase. The main
evidences for this judgment are as follows:
First, the credit expansion
policy has changed both the economic fundamentals and the operating mechanism of
the U.S. economy. It is a basic state policy of the U.S. to take credit
expansion as an engine of economic development. As a result of the highly
developed domestic credit policy, the credit relations between the creditors and
debtors have become the basic economic relations between social members. In
addition, an international credit system, with the U.S. at the core, has been
built up on the basis of international credit expansion, and international
credit relations have become the basic economic relations between the United
States and other members of the international community. Thus, the formation of
the U.S. economic foundation has been changed, and credit relations have become
a dominant driving force for economic and social development, the paradoxical
movement of credit relations determines the direction of U.S. economic and
social development. Due to the abuse of credit, the United States became a net
debtor country in 1985. From then on, its economic and social activities have
been completely based on the huge amount of debts. The status of the
creditor-debtor relations not only influences the development model and
performance of the U.S. economy, but also constitutes the basis for the nation
to choose economic regime and make strategic choices.
Credit expansion has
also changed the forming mechanism of United States credit demand, and the
market has become the governing force to create the credit demand. The U.S.
globalization of social credit has also reached a high level, 30% of which comes
from foreign capital. Therefore, the national capacity to adjust social credit
demand through monetary policy instruments such as the money supply and interest
rate has been greatly weakened. The change in the forming mechanism of credit
demand has fundamentally strengthened the dominant role of market in the
economy, which indicates the market-oriented social credit relationship would
fully influence the U.S. economic and social development. The status of credit
relationships in the United States restricts the country’s creative capability
of actual value by affecting its economic structure. The heavy debt burden which
exceeds the real debt repayment capability forces the state apparatus to satisfy
the country’s capital demand in the manner of surpassing the speed of value
creation by the real economy. The over-expansion of virtual economy is the
result of the paradoxical movement of the credit relationship in the United
States. Thus, Dagong believes that as long as the policy of credit expansion
remains intact in United States, the development model of financialization of
the national economy would not be changed and the key factors to induce long
term economic recession would continue to play a role.
Second, the
economic financilization and industrial hollowing-out in the United States has
broken the normal relationship between the financial system and real economy,
leading to the pursuit of the virtual wealth. As social capital was largely
sucked into the financial system, the value of a huge amount of financial assets
operating away from the underlying assets and basic economy is amplified in a
surprising manner, making people more concerned about the increase in virtual
wealth and less interested in creating real wealth; and a large number of
entities were transferred overseas, resulting in a serious industrial
hallowing-out, thus the country’s creative capability of actual wealth has been
severely weakened. In addition, as the government has long relied on borrowing
to carry out its administrative functions, it would gradually lose the autonomy
to manage the economy though effective exploration of fiscal policy, and finally
has to resort to the banknote printing machine, like killing the goose that lays
the golden eggs. The improvement in the creative capability of actual wealth
depends on the reasonable positioning of the financial system and real economy,
and the adjustment process will determine the U.S. economic recovery and vision
for future development.
Third, the U.S. global hegemonic strategy has
consumed enormous national financial resources, but its own capacity of wealth
production is insufficient to support its huge strategic target. The dependence
on issuing national debt or U.S. dollars to carry out its strategy not only
lacks sustainability, but also becomes the root of yielding fiscal deficit. A
balance of state revenue and expenditures is advantageous to the sustained
development of the U.S. economy. However, it is almost impossible for the U.S.
government to abandon its global strategy. Hence, it will become a long-term
factor to hinder the U.S. economy.
Fourth, long-term dependence on the U.S.
dollar depreciation to export debt is not only harmful to the creditor’s
interests, but is also unable to solve its debt dilemma. The problem of the
national development strategy is that it causes the U.S. government to bear a
huge debt burden; however the U.S. government is unwilling to adjust its
strategy to reduce debt; rather, it believes that exporting debt through the
U.S. dollar depreciation is more compliant with the interests of the United
States. Although the U.S. dollar depreciation forces creditors to transfer their
interests to the US, it will reduce the market confidence in U.S. dollars, which
may trigger the trend of selling U.S. dollars. Hence, it will change the
international currency system pattern, and the U.S. dollar hegemonic status will
be shaken inevitably, which will ultimately affect the backflow of U.S. dollars,
hindering the international financing channel of the U.S. government directly,
and reducing its debt income. The debt income concerns the prosperity of the
United States. To avoid the outbreak of debt crisis, it has to issue additional
currency to solve the problem of insufficient debt income. Hence, the U.S.
dollar starts a new round of depreciation, circulating on and on, which
intensifies the risk of debt repayment inevitably.
Fifth, the reform of
financial and rating systems has failed to fully reflect the essential
requirements of the credit economy, and it is difficult to establish a basic
service system of national economy that accommodates the development law of a
credit economy, so as to push the U.S. economy into a path of revival.
"Financial Regulatory Reform Act" is the main measure of the U.S. government to
prevent further crisis, but its content shows that they have not really found
the root of the problems within the U.S. financial system. The root cause of
credit crisis can not be eradicated by simply resting on regulatory reforms.
The U.S. financial system has created a myriad of financial products,
which attract the continuous influx of global USD capital. Foreign capitals make
up the most important part of the U.S. economic ecosystem, and it is the driving
force of this very system to obtain capital revenue through credit expansion,
but the consequent problems are serious: (1) social capitals are
encouraged to engage in financial speculations, and the pursuit of virtual
wealth rather than material wealth is not conducive for the United States to
enhance its capacity of value creation; (2) credit activities have deviated from
the proper role of supporting the development of real economy, the social credit
demand is mainly determined by the market, and the extra credit created by the
market becomes hot money that jeopardizes the country’s economic development.
Furthermore, the government’s ability to regulate social credit is largely
impaired by financial innovation products; (3) the financial system is composed
of complicated credit relationships, which exacerbates the asymmetry of credit
risk information and augments the probability of systemic risks.
The
development of credit socialization should not suggest any change in the
orientation of financial services. The essence of finance lies in the credit
relations between the creditors and debtors. This relationship constitutes the
whole of the social credit system, providing a system for distribution of funds
for the real economy to create social wealth. As a result of the pursuit of
value adding by means of credit innovation, the scale of social credit in the
United States is in wild expansion, so that the threat of systemic credit risk
becomes a constant phenomenon. With the continued depreciation of U.S. dollar,
once its dominant position around the world is severely challenged, the
financial system that relies heavily on the strong dollar will no longer support
the national economy to operate in the current model. In this context the
government will have to rebuild the national economic system, the social cost of
which will be enormous. The U.S. government failed to make a master plan for the
reform of the financial system from a strategic level, and the principles as
well as the approach of the reform are ambiguous. The ongoing reform aimed at
practical interests is one that addresses the symptoms not the cause. Such a
reform can not adapt to the historical requirement necessary for the recovery of
the U.S. economy and improving the U.S. economic system. The crisis triggered by
the failure of its credit rating system has almost destroyed the U.S. financial
system. However the current reform measures do not address the fundamental
problems and the U.S. rating system, tested by the financial crisis, is going to
lose a historical opportunity of recovery. The main problem in the U.S. credit
rating system is it treats the CRAs as general players in the market and does
not encourage competition amongst them, and such a mechanism cannot ensure the
CRAs will fulfill their public responsibilities. The U.S. credit rating systems
lack of institutional guarantees to reveal credit risk cannot provide reliable
credit risk information to the public and it is falling behind the development
of the credit system. Therefore, to a certain extent, the credit system cannot
provide effective funding to support the economic recovery and
development.
Dagong believes that the deep-rooted reason for the credit
crisis that happened in the United States is that the current model of economic
development and management has deviated from the laws of credit economic
development. Radically, it is the problem in the idea of governing the country
and national strategy. The fact that the traditional way did not save the United
States economy further proves that the U.S. government lacks the capability to
rule the country by following the law of credit economy. The economic recovery
in the U.S. depends on the change in the way of thinking of its government;
however such a change is very difficult to realize whether the Republican or
Democratic Party is in power. Therefore, the U.S. government will follow its
lingering notion, consequently the economic recovery will last a long time and
the government’s debt repayment capability will deteriorate even further.
II. Subject to the economic development model
of the United States, the credit crisis is far from over, and the U.S. economy
will be in a long-term recession.
The key economic data of the United States in three consecutive years since
the financial crisis indicates a declining or slight recovery trend in GDP, the
size of the banking industry and fiscal revenue, money supply, unemployment
rate, fiscal deficit and the outstanding government debt remain at a high level.
Adopting the extreme measure of continuous issuance of currency in the context
of unconventional use of monetary and fiscal policies to save its economy
indicates that the credit crisis in the U.S. financial field is evolving into a
national crisis. The root cause is that something is wrong with the economic
development model adopted by the United States. The consequent imbalance in the
national economic structure requires the government to adjust its economic
strategy in order to realize a new balance and create a new economic
architecture for economic recovery. Therefore, Dagong analyzes and judges the
prospects of the U.S. economy from the following aspects:
First, the
motivational force of the U.S. economic growth is credit expansion and at
present the huge debt is the result of long-term accumulation of credit
expansion. Gone are the basic conditions that the economic recovery is realized
through repeated use of credit expansion. Therefore, it is impossible for the
U.S. economy to generate a driving force for healthy development unless it can
return to the real economy and discover new areas of value creation. As of the
end of 2009, the total debt, including that of the U.S. government, enterprises
and household, amounted to 52.3 trillion U.S. dollars, while the GDP was just
14.3 trillion U.S. dollars in the same period. Without a massive increase in the
real value of domestic production, it is impossible for the United States to
acquire the capability of paying off its stock debt by relying solely on its
current capability of value creation. Therefore, the U.S. economy would be bound
to sink even deeper into the mire if it continues to rely on the credit
expansion model of economic development.
Second, the U.S. capability of
creating real wealth can not support its huge consumption. Under the current
circumstance it is difficult to increase the speed of wealth growth; the only
correct way out of debt reduction is mitigation of expenditure. Since the U.S.
government will not adjust its national strategy, it is inevitable for the
United States to increase debt or transfer debt by depreciating the U.S. dollar.
The inevitability of such a move makes the dominant factor in the lasting
stagnancy of the U.S. economy. In the components of the U.S. GDP in 2009, the
financial services sector accounted for 21.4% while the real economy sector
accounted for 65%.The total output value of the U.S. financial services industry
is composed of two major parts: one is the transferred production value, most of
which comes from value distribution of participating in international
production. Another part is the inflated value originated from credit
innovation, which belongs to bubble value. In addition, due to the high economic
financialization, more than half of the profits in the real economy come from
the returns of financial activities. If we exclude the factor of virtual
economy, the U.S. actual GDP is about 5 trillion U.S. dollars in 2009, per
capita GDP about $ 15,000. Meanwhile, the total domestic consumption was 10.0
trillion U.S. dollars and government expenditure was 4.5 trillion U.S. dollars.
The production capacity of real value in the national economy is the material
base to arrange social distribution and consumption. As the U.S. government
arranges its budget according to the GDP including the virtual value, its
revenue must fall short of its expenditure, so the socialization and
normalization of debts will exacerbate the environment of economic development.
It is predicted that the average real GDP per year of the United States will not
reach 6 trillion U.S. dollar and per capita GDP will be less than 20,000 in the
coming 3-5 years.
Third, the international division of labor and the import
and export policies will make it difficult for the United States to realize
balance of international payment. Based on the U.S. industrial structure,
exports are mainly comprised of high-tech products, but the U.S. limits the
export of technical products for strategic reasons; however, what the U.S. needs
the most are daily necessities and energy, etc. In this case, imports are rigid,
while exports are elastic. On the one hand, American products are not essential
items for many countries; on the other hand, due to the policy restraint, it is
difficult to effectively raise the export volume, all of these causes the U.S.
to have long-term structural trade deficit. Ever since 1983, the current account
deficit of the United States has been increasing by an average of 20% year on
year. Even if considering the stimulation effect of U.S. dollar depreciation to
export, the current account deficit is expected to maintain 4% of GDP for the
next 3-5 years. The U.S. dollars outflow through current account deficit flows
back to the United States through the capital account and financial projects,
which supports its financial system to realize the transfer of international
production value to the U.S. The U.S. imbalance of trade becomes an
international wealth plundering system by exchanging domestic necessities with
the export of the U.S. dollars. It is the barometer to measure whether the U.S.
has the creative capability of actual value.
Fourth, it is difficult for
the renewable energy development strategy to become the new focus of economic
growth. The renewable energy development strategy proposed by the Obama
administration is beneficial to inspiring people’s confidence in economic
recovery, but it is still impossible to become an effective power to reverse the
American economic development situation in a moderately long time, because the
U.S. lacks the strategic investment capability that would make renewable energy
an industry to transform the national economy. In addition, it is confronted
with the formidable competition from Northern Europe in terms of the new energy
technologies. Therefore, this strategy will exert very weak influence on
changing the American economic structure and development model within a long
period of time.
In general, it is difficult for the current economic
structure used in U.S. economic development model to create sufficient material
base to support its domestic consumption. Virtual economy gives tremendous
impact on the safety of the national economic system. The reform of the
development model of the national economy forms the decisive factor to stop the
economic recession and to realize the sustained development of the national
economy in the post-crisis era.
III. Continuous economic downturn leads to
increasing risks in the financial system and the trend of the U.S. dollar
depreciation will cripple the value transfer capability of the financial system
to attract dollar capital reflow.
After the crisis, the stability of the American financial system has not
improved fundamentally; rather, it will face increasingly more serious rising
trend of risks. After the financial crisis broke out in 2008, the large scale
bailout program of the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government temporarily
stabilized the financial system; the too-big-to-fail financial institutions
benefited a lot. However, there are still toxic assets such as the huge
financial derivatives hidden in the financial system waiting for effective
disposal, and the future deleveraging process will take time. In addition, the
long term high unemployment rate caused a rise in loan defaults. By the end of
Q2 2010, the default rate of bank loans in the United States has achieved 7.32%,
increasing for 17 consecutive quarters, in which the default rate in the housing
loans has increased to 11.4%. Since the government withdrew the housing stimulus
measures in April 2010, the real estate market has been in recession and the
problem of foreclosure tends to become serious. It is estimated that the banks
will face the repurchase pressure of nearly 220 billion U.S. dollars worth of
real estate mortgage bond, which cannot be satisfied by the current provision
for repurchase. On the basis of 140 cases of bank failure in 2009, another 86
banks went bankrupt in the first half of 2010 and the current number of troubled
banks has reached nearly 500. The end of 2010 is likely to witness a new rise in
bankruptcy for small and medium-sized banks in the U.S.
The U.S. monetary policy used in dealing with the crisis has almost lost its
effect in promoting economic growth. As a new economic driving force has not
formed in the United States, the declining intention of individual consumption
and corporate investment leads to the shrinking of monetary demand. Although the
continuous loose monetary policy of the Federal Reserve has largely increased
the basic monetary supply, it has failed to promote the expansion of domestic
credit scale. The insufficient credit demand of real economy combined with the
bank’s mood of reluctant lending during the period of economic downturn due to
asymmetry of credit risk information, has resulted in the decreasing credit
scale in the United States. Following the 10.3% decline in the amount of
commercial bank credit and leasing in 2009, another 7.2% decline happened in the
first three quarters in 2010 on a year-on -year basis. The large amount of
liquidity accumulated within the financial system is mainly used for speculative
financial transactions and flowing into foreign markets, which is neither
conducive to promoting the development of real economy nor helpful for improving
the chronic overexpansion of virtual economy.
The Federal Reserve’s
monetary policy of continuous quantitative easing has temporarily reduced the
long-term debt interest rate, but the consequent dollar depreciation trend will
trigger the financial system’s long-term recession. The monetary policy of a new
round of quantitative easing launched by the Federal Reserve on November 3, 2010
plans to release another 600 billion U.S. dollars of long-term U.S. treasury
bond by the end of June next year. The direct objective of this policy is to
maintain the current low yield of the Treasury. The continuous U.S. economic
downturn and the government’s increasing debt burden have undermined the foreign
investors’ confidence in the Treasury. These investors turn to buy gold to avoid
risk, which pushes up the price of gold and increases the pressure of a rise in
long-term interest rate. Especially for a highly-indebted economy as the United
States, a large amount of financial derivative contracts in the financial system
is related with the interest rate; the increase of long-term interest rates will
cause another big fluctuation in the financial system, restrict the economic
recovery, and increase the government’s burden of debt service. The Federal
Reserve’s monetary policy can temporarily decrease the long-term interest rate,
but it can also trigger the dollar’s depreciation and reduce the attraction of
dollar-denominated assets to foreign investors. From June, 2010 until now, the
U.S. dollar index has dropped about 6% and has depreciated 15% relative to the
Euro, 11% relative to the Sterling Pound, 13% relative to the Yen, 18.5%
relative to the Australian dollar, 11.4% relative to the Korean Won. The
dollar’s continuous depreciation will cripple the value transfer capability of
the U.S. financial system to attract the dollar capital to reflow, and the
status of the U.S. as the global financial center is on the decline. Therefore,
the room for implementing of monetary policy in the United States is
increasingly being squeezed. On the one hand, the long-standing quantitative
easing policy will only play a temporary role in decreasing interest rate, as a
consequence the dollar depreciation is not conducive to the financing
requirement of the United States as the largest debtor country and the interest
assertion of the creditor will be the potential pressure to the increasing
interest rate. On the other hand, the long-term economic downtown makes it
impossible for the government to increase interest rate and regain a strong
dollar policy. In this dilemma, any policies chosen by the Federal Reserve will
hurt itself. Though it is likely for the current loose monetary policy to
postpone the occurrence of the difficulties, yet in the long run, it will be
proven to be a practice resembling drinking poison to quench thirst.
IV. New round of liquidity injection can not
substantially reverse the trend of increasing the federal government’s fiscal
deficit and debt burden in the long term.
The U.S. Monetary Authority launched the monetary policy of a new round of
quantitative easing, announcing the release of a large amount of federal
government Treasury bond continuously. However, it only has a limited positive
influence for easing the current embarrassed fiscal conditions of the federal
government. In 2009, the U.S. increased another 1 trillion U.S. dollars fiscal
deficit in response to the financial crisis, making the ratio of year-end fiscal
deficit to GDP a record 10.6%, and consequently led to more difficult fiscal
operation for the government. Under these circumstances, the Federal Reserve
took the measure of direct debt monetization, on the one hand, financing for the
federal government’s fiscal deficit, and on the other hand, keeping the U.S.
Treasury interest rate at a low level. The federal government’s financing cost
and interest burden, therefore, are both controlled at relatively favorable
levels.
Additionally, further depreciation of the U.S. dollar is
inevitable due to the liquidity increased by the monetary policy of a new round
of quantitative easing, and the U.S. government’s current debt burden, to some
extent, is expected to be released. By the end of 2009, the balance of the U.S.
government’s outstanding debts reached 12.3 trillion U.S. dollars, of which over
7.8 trillion U.S. dollars debts were held by the public including foreign
investors. This is to say, if the U.S. dollar depreciates by 1%, the actual
decrease of government’s debt burden will exceed 123 billion U.S. dollars, about
5.5% of its fiscal revenue in 2009. The U.S. base currency will be supplied with
an increase of 30% on the existing basis in the coming eight months, therefore,
in full consideration of such factors as economic recession and slowdown of
currency circulation caused by shrinkage of private credit, a conservative
estimate would be U.S. domestic inflation increase of about 1.5 percentage
points and U.S. exchange rate index down approximately 10% before Q2 2011. As a
result, federal debts will actually be reduced by over 250 billion U.S. dollars.
Public creditors’ interests are invisibly eroded due to the depreciation of U.S.
dollar; especially the foreign creditors will suffer even greater losses from
fluctuation of U.S. dollar exchange rate. Although the federal government could
ease its actual debt burden to some extent via this channel, its sovereign
credit will be adversely affected as it ignores the responsibilities of credit
contracts and the legitimate rights and interests of creditors.
For a long
time, the U.S. authority has not been temperate in its government credit
expansion, resulting in large fiscal deficit and increasingly high government
debts in consecutive years. Under current governance framework in the U.S.,
rigid expenditure accounted for a larger proportion of the fiscal expenditure to
satisfy its global hegemonic strategy, which, on one side, increased the
difficulty for the U.S. federal government to optimize its fiscal expenditure
structure and control deficit growth, while, on the other side, made the federal
government unable to have sufficient operating space in smoothing economic
periodic fluctuation by fiscal policy instruments so that sustainable and steady
economic growth cannot be guaranteed. After the breakout of the global financial
crisis, the weak economic growth in the U.S., increase of the fiscal expenditure
and the launch of the monetary policy of a new round of quantitative easing will
all drive the U.S. debt burden to increase further. The pattern that the U.S.
government has of a high fiscal deficit and heavy debt burden is essentially
because of its terribly-flawed development model of debt economy, which can not
be significantly improved by simply increasing channels for issuance of the U.S.
dollar. Dagong predicts that the U.S. fiscal deficit will remain moderately high
in 2010 and 2011, about 10.8% and 8% of the year’s GDP respectively. The federal
debts will also increase in 2010 and 2011 on the basis of 2009, and the ratio to
the year’s GDP will be as high as 95% and 97% respectively.
V. In essence the depreciation of the U.S.
dollar adopted by the U.S. government indicates that its solvency is on the
brink of collapse, therefore it wants to cut its debt through the act of
devaluation with the national will; such a move has severely harmed the
interests of creditors. The whole world, consequently, will have to face a
period of dramatic adjustment of interest pattern.
The status of the U.S. dollar as the dominant international reserve
currency determines that its depreciation gives an inevitable impact to the
interests of all creditors. In addition to the shrinking of creditors’ assets,
the utter chaos in the international currency system triggered by the
depreciation of the U.S. dollar will definitely damage the interests of all the
creditors in the world at various levels. Together with the possibility of
inflation in the future, the wealth of creditors will be plundered once again by
the malicious act of currency devaluation conducted by the U.S. government after
it suffered the losses during the financial crisis since 2007.
The value fluctuation of the world’s major currencies caused by the
continuous devaluation of the U.S. dollar will push the adjustment in world
interest pattern through the value comparison of the monetary system. The
essence is to transfer the interests of the creditors to the debtor free of
charge, and that will fundamentally destroy the international credit system and
global economic system comprised of the creditor system and debtor system,
resulting in an overall crisis around the world.
Outlook
Dagong believes that the occurrence and development process of the credit
crisis in the U.S. resulted from the long-standing accumulation of the
contradictions in its economic system; the U.S. debt burden can be relieved only
to a certain extent through large-scale printing and issuance of the U.S.
dollar; however the consequent decline of the U.S. dollar status and national
credit will block the debt revenue channel which is vital to the existence of
the United States to a greater extent. The potential overall crisis in the world
resulting from the U.S. dollar depreciation will increase the uncertainty of the
U.S. economic recovery. Under the circumstances that none of the economic
factors influencing the U.S. economy has turned better explicitly it is possible
that the U.S. will continue to expand the use of its loose monetary policy,
damaging the interests the creditors. Therefore, given the current situation,
the United States may face much unpredictable risks in solvency in the coming
one to two years. Accordingly, Dagong assigns negative outlook on both local and
foreign currency sovereign credit ratings of the United States.