Personally, I don’t trust the banks to even get their hair cut to the extent they’re promising. They remain the spivs and dissemblers they’ve always been – and bank accounting is the most surreal (as in open to every trick in the book) of any business with which I’ve ever worked. To count obviously bad debts as assets is, let’s face it, a truly Swiftian idea. So probably, S&P is right to be saying Greece won’t make it. I mean that in the sense that it will be proved right with little or no risk to its reputation. For a commonsense "southerner" like me, it’s glaringly obvious Greece will default: it won’t make the asset sales targets it needs, and it won’t make the growth targets either.The ratings agencies agree with The Slog – not a position I’m that happy with, because on the whole they’re just as mad as the lenders and borrowers they monitor. However, there is no point in shooting the messenger, and one or two players in this mess are in touch with reality: German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble admitted yesterday, in a circular to his Christian Democratic Party colleagues, that ‘the euro-zone debt crisis isn’t over, and that more discipline is needed’. Er ist eine gute Eier, Herr Schäuble. The Treasury had to pay sharply higher rates to sell off €8bn in bonds including 4.80pc on bonds due in 2014 that had last sold for 3.68pc, and 5.77 percent on bonds due in 2021 compared with 4.94pc before. Italy's benchmark FTSE MIB index fell as much as 2pc, while the difference between the rate of return on Italian and German 10-year sovereign bonds - a key measure of the financial risks as perceived by investors - rose to near-record highs of around 330 basis points. The euro also fell by a cent against the dollar to $1.4269 and by 0.7cents against sterling to £0.8745. Investors are concerned that the Italian economy, suffering from high public debt, low growth and growing infighting in the government could follow Greece, Ireland and Portugal into a debt spiral that has thrown the eurozone into crisis. Tensions on the Italian bond market went down after a second bailout for Greece was agreed at a summit in Brussels last week but have returned on concerns over the details of the Greek rescue plan and US debt fears...I say..through away the phony currency - euro!!

In an embarrassing development for John Boehner, the Republican Congress speaker, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) ruled on Tuesday night that his bill would have only cut spending by $850bn (£517bn)over the next decade, not the $1.2tn he had aimed for. Republicans are now racing to rewrite the legislation, and have pushed back a congressional vote on the plan from Wednesday to Thursday at the earliest. Although Boehner was already struggling to find support for his package, the delay increases the risk that Washington will fail to agree a deal to raise the debt ceiling before 2 August, when the federal government is expected to run out of money. The dollar dropped against other currencies on Wednesday morning as investors faced the possibility that America could default. Several economists believe the country will lose its AAA credit rating within months, which would push up its borrowing costs, even if the $14.3tn debt ceiling is increased in time. The White House said on Tuesday it was working with Congress to devise a "Plan B" that might attract enough support. The two sides have been deeply divided for weeks, with Republicans demanding deep spending cuts and Democrats anxious to include tax rises as a major part of the deal.

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