"Our outlook remains cautious, consistent with our view that economic recovery will be constrained by low credit creation and the structural weaknesses in consumers' and governments' balance sheets," the bank said in a statement.
Optimists argue that political uncertainty in Italy might even have a positive side effect if it pushes euro zone leaders to compensate by making tough decisions to repair some of the structural weaknesses in the single currency.
The structural weaknesses of our system are the structural strengths of special interests.
They concern the structural weaknesses that bedevil multilateral efforts.
But that is at best a stopgap solution, because it does nothing to address the structural weaknesses of the eurozone.
S&P said the "structural weaknesses" in the Spanish economy, and the likelihood of a long recession, made holding the country's debt more risky.
Second, the structural weaknesses in our State Constitution are actually responsible for many of the abuses that now exist.
But these alternative corporate forms have addressed some of the structural weaknesses that once held them back.
The president said he had rejected calls to scrap the current regulatory network, opting instead to devise reforms "to pinpoint the structural weaknesses that allowed for this crisis".
But what we are seeing are the structural weaknesses of the post-2008 recovery, and we're getting a glimpse of what a real crash could look like.
