'UK loses top AAA credit rating for first time since 1978'

I used to believe that Vince Cable knew what he was talking about in terms of the economy - after all he did warn about the likelihood of the banking crisis - but they went and made Osborne chancellor and the rest is very unfortunate history. IMHO

flick 'don't vote for any of them, it only encourages them' One will cut back on everything to save money and the other will spend prolifically to try to get out of the mire. I don't think either of them really has the answer and neither do I

Who are these agencies anyway to set themselves up as experts? Must be full of economists and from watching interviews with these "experts" I agree with the joke "Put 3 economists together and you'll get 4 different opinions".

Well so far today the markets are not shaken, nor stirred.

As of lunch time Germany, UK, France and the USA are all up in the Bond Yields, not much between them. The FTSE shows to be doing equally as well across the board. The pound against the Euro was £1.14p.

Fingers crossed things do not change as the day progresses.

The pound at 1.14 is still a big drop from a couple of months ago! OH has been doing the spreadsheet today to see how our budget will be affected. We build in a variable exchange rate and know very well that it is our own choice to live here, but always a bit of a bummer!
Average for last year was about 1.23, I gather.

Yes, but what evidence is there that if you put three economists together you get three opinions? It is like the phrase 'Lies, damned lies and statistics'. If you examine the statistics understand them properly you can see where the bias, if any lies and once you know the limitations you can interprete them successfully. What doesnt work is someone who doesnt understand figures or how to collect them cobbling together some survey and proclaiming the results as facts.

There is a famous story of a poll before, I think the 1948 US presidential election. A major newspaper did a telephone survey of electors and came out with huge banner headlines that the republicans were going to sweep the board in the election. In fact it was a democratic landslide . The paper had failed to factor in that the proportion of the population with phones was not that large and disproportionately owned by the well-off and older households that were more likely to be republicans.

Speaker Bercow gave Labour permission to bring an 'Urgent Question' to the House today re the UK loosing the AAA status.

What an own goal. They should have waited to see what the markets did today before giving Osborne the chance to trounce them, trounce them he did.