Now the fun, or not, begins.

So, perhaps the US markets really did want Romney to win after all?  Obama gets a second term and the markets, after a calm start, have a hissy fit and throw their toys out of the pram. At one stage the Dow was in positive territory, then later hit -300, ending up 312 down. The UK FTSE joined the early celebration party, then caught the bad mood as the day went on.

Was it thoughts of the fiscal cliff ahead or the fact that Europe came in with some less than encouraging economic numbers that gatecrashed the party? Oh, and to top the day off the Greeks, their politicians that is, are voting again on more austerity. Not much of a party going on in Greece right now.

Of the economic numbers, the one that may well have scared the market the most was news that Germany's industrial production contracted at a faster rate than expected in September. Output was down 1.8% month-on-month, instead of the 0.7% fall expected. Now people can probably see why Germany doesn't want to take on the burden of all of Europe's economic woes and why they seem to be standing pretty firm on what others should be doing to clear up their debt mess.

Obama says the best is yet to come, if anything the markets went back to the volatility of the recent past. Fiscal cliff fears will be with the market until the politicians agree on the next cobbled together compromise as surely they must. They probably don't have much of a choice.

Germany on a credit rating "warning"

I commented yesterday on Germany and one of the reasons why they are reluctant to go all in on bailing out the bad debt EU countries.  Today the credit rating agency Moody's has put a negative warning on Germany's AAA credit rating, which means there is a possibility of it being downgraded in the next two years.

A negative outlook posting from Moody's, one of a handful of agencies that assess the creditworthiness of borrowers, reflects a higher risk that the actual rating will be cut at some point in the next two years. 

Moody's said there was an increased chance that Greece could leave the euro zone, which "would set off a chain of financial sector shocks". 

It added that policymakers could only contain these shocks at a very high cost. 

'Burden' 

Moody's warned that Germany and other highly-rated countries may have to increase levels of support for countries such as Spain and Italy, who have not asked for a Greek-style bailout but who are struggling with high debt levels. 

This is the risk that Germany has to weigh up when deciding on its commitment to the bad debt nations of the EU. Germany cannot afford for itself to be judged as negative by the markets.  It perhaps goes some way to explain why despite numerous summits over the last 2-3 years, the level of full commitment to resolving the crisis that the Markets would like to see Germany give has not been forthcoming.

Source http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18963810