Greece Reduced to Junk Status

Some of the European Union's most vulnerable and debt-saddled nations saw their government bonds sink Tuesday, with Greece's two-year notes seeing the largest drop since 1998 after their rating was downgraded to junk by S&P. Portuguese, Spanish, Irish, and Italian securities also fell, sparking new nervousness among financial analysts. Orlando Green, an interest-rate strategist at Credit Agricole CIB in London, said: “We’re entering into a phase of blind panic." According to Axel Botte, a strategist at AXA Investment Managers in Paris, "The biggest risk now is that the market speculates against every single indebted peripheral country, and that could lead to a sovereign debt crisis."