There is widespread concern that one of the other two major credit ratings agencies will lower their rating of American government debt in the coming months.
France has the weakest economy of all the triple-A rated countries, and although the ratings companies have confirmed that their rating of France is stable, passage of the golden rule may comfort the markets, especially if the Socialists win the presidency.
We can take this fuzziness in name recognition a step farther by examining the percentage of Republicans who can rate Republican candidates in a series of recent polls summarized in the table below (all come from surveys conducted in March, except the NBC/Wall Street Journal ratings of Romney and Pawlenty, fielded in late February, and their rating of Sarah Palin from late January).
If they did, their rating of that individual was discounted.
Increasingly, town-planning types base their rating of a city as "child-friendly" on something called "the popsicle test".
Flamholtz told them that, if they expanded their market share, analysts would raise their rating of the stock.
Voters in each state are closely divided in their rating of the president, and majorities say the country is on the wrong track.
Moody's and Standard & Poor's have both warned that they might cut their rating of French government debt, alarming the government in Paris.The economy's problems run deep.
A recent poll in Serbia showed that almost 42percentt of respondents rated his performance a 5 out of 5, even if their rating of him as a politician remained low, 2.5.
Analysts at UBS Equity Research were not surprised by the cut and maintained their rating of "Reduce 2".
The women recruited from snowball sampling were also required to take the initial survey to assess their rating of Michelle Obama's style.
