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Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg had the outlooks for their AAA credit ratings lowered to negative by Moody’s Investors Service in past week, citing “rising uncertainty” about Europe’s debt crisis, the risk of Greece leaving the eurozone, and the growing likelihood of massive bailout bills in Spain and Italy. On the whole, they seem like pretty sound reasons to me.

The IMF has, as I predicted, written off Greece. The Greek elite is, in turn, not even trying to hide how little effort they’re exerting to put their own public sector feathered-nest in order. The managements of Greek state-run enterprises seem to be so forgetful, they forgot to implement government decisions concerning wages cuts for thousands of employees at state-run enterprises (DEKO) and other state bodies and organizations. And the Coalition itself omitted to pass the legislation forcing them to do it.

The Troika arrived in Athens this week, to be vociferous in pointing out the non-compliance. (I doubt if they’ll bother to mention that all the forgotten public sector cuts have been dumped onto the already flatlining private sector). It is just possible that the Troikanauts will say “That’s it, no more money”, but unlikely: with Spain and Italy in bond-yield intensive care, this would be bad timing.

Spain’s two-year bond yield saw its biggest one-day move since the eurozone debt crisis broke out in early 2010, closing at 6.53 per cent. “Spain is close to losing access to markets entirely,” said John Stopford, a senior fund manager at Investec Asset Management. “It’s not sustainable to borrow at these levels for very long.” He’s not wrong: Spain is entering the Greek Twilight Zone --- An association representing German banks has called for an extra year to implement tougher rules that would force them to hold more cash as a buffer against possible financial crises. The BVR group of private and public banks called for a delay until January 1, 2014 for the entry into force of the so-called Basel III regulations due to the "enormous technical restructuring and implementation work" needed. The planned implementation at the beginning of 2013 was "no longer realistic" said the group.