S&P, Geithner and Company: Stop mingling in EU Affairs

It all is starting to look like a lot of unwanted heavy handed US pressure on Europe. 

Just days before EU leaders convene for a do-or-die crisis summit in Brussels, US based Standard and Poor's announced it was putting the sovereign debt of almost all eurozone countries, as well as the bloc's 440-billion-euro ($590-billion) bailout fund, on review for a possible downgrade. France, Germany, and leaders of all the 17 euro-zone nations were angered by Standard@ Poor's decision to put almost the entire bloc on credit watch, just as the single currency is desperately fighting for its survival. At the same time U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, on a trip in Europe, put even more negative pressure on Europe by saying that he was worried: "the eyes of the world are very much on Europe."

The German media turned on S@P for timing its announcement to coincide with this week's frantic search for a solution to Europe's debt crisis.The website of the German newspaper Handelsblatt reported resentment and indignation, with political and banking figures highly critical of the agency.

Christian Noyer, the president of Banque de France accused rating agencies of acting as "one of the motors of the crisis in 2008" and said it could be asked whether they were playing the same role now. Mr Noyer said that in the light of Monday's Franco-Germany agreement on far-reaching measures to tackle the crisis, the agency had mistimed its announcement as well as relying on methodology based more on political than economic factors.

Even outside the euro-zone, some eyebrows were raised. Alastair Campbell, who was press secretary to Tony Blair when the latter was British prime minister, said on Twitter it was time for television documentary makers to "shine a light" on ratings companies.

EU politicians have long been waging a war against the huge power of the rating US based ra6ting agencies and some denounced S@P's moves as a bid to deflect attention away from the United States' much bigger — and potentially even more dangerous — debt mountain.

Unfortunately the problem is that the U.S. media landscape is dominated by massive Wall Street traded corporations have , through a history of mergers and acquisitions concentrated their control over what people see, hear and read, not only in the US, but also around the world. In many cases, these giant companies are vertically integrated, controlling everything from initial production to final distribution. Recently they have turned their wrath against Europe, which has been actively trying to get the world to put stricter controls on free-wheeling Wall Street speculators, the banks and the financial community in general.

Said one EU parliamentarian: "We don't need US credit rating agencies here. As to Mr. Geithner,  please pack your bags, go home and deal with your own country's problems.  Don't tell Europe what to do.

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