The spread between the interest charged on Greek and German debt widens to 4% as investors fret that Greece may default.
"I'm completely single, and I don't mind," says Richardson. "I don't want to settle down, at least not until my early thirties". Kenway reckons that the emerging milleuristi are part of what he calls the "proletarianisation" of the middle classes, as rising graduate debt widens the gap between the very richest and, well, the rest of us.
UTV Media's net debt widened slightly from £43.5m to £46.9m.
There are also signs investors are looking for the next country that could lose its AAA rating: the cost to insure French government debt widened significantly.
ITV is also facing an uplift in the cost of its financing, as net debt widened to £730m at the end of 2008, compared with £668m a year earlier.
The prospects of America following suit, says S&P, are hobbled by the fact that Republicans and Democrats cannot agree on how to tackle the deficit.Although stocks fell and credit-default swaps on American debt widened when the news broke, the bond market remained oddly unruffled: yields ended lower on the day.
Greece's financing costs are now 11.7 percent, and spreads, or the risk premiums associated with its debt, widened again Wednesday on reports that the country's largest bank, the National Bank of Greece, would raise $3.6 billion — prompting concerns that the banking sector must raise more capital than originally expected.
The Athens stock market fell by 2.1 percent and the spread, or gap, between yields on Greek and German 10-year bonds — a measure of confidence in Greek debt — widened 23-hundreths of a point to more than 2.9 percentage points, after narrowing Thursday, and the euro fell to a nine-month low against the dollar, as investors questioned European leaders' resolve.
Over the same period, U.S. high-yield debt widened from 523 to 674 basis points above the ten-year Treasury.
In 2000 the big automakers' debt widened by nearly 100 basis points (a full percentage point) against interest-rate swap yields, the global credit benchmark.
Expect the yields on some of these bonds, particularly for Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland, to keep rising as spreads, which essentially represent perceived risk associated with that government's debt, widen.
