Reuters: Financial Services and Real Estate: TEXT-S&P says Israel ratings unaffected by expanded coalition

Reuters: Financial Services and Real Estate Reuters.com is your source for breaking news, business, financial and investing news, including personal finance and stocks. Reuters is the leading global provider of news, financial information and technology solutions to the world's media, financial institutions, businesses and individuals. // via fulltextrssfeed.com

TEXT-S&P says Israel ratings unaffected by expanded coalition May 8th 2012, 16:09 Tue May 8, 2012 12:09pm EDT May 8 - Standard & Poor's Ratings Services said today that its ratings and outlook on the State of Israel (A+/Stable/A-1) are not immediately affected by imminent changes in the government coalition. Israel's opposition leader, Shaul Mofaz, announced today that his Kadima party will join the government for the rest of its term, until November 2013. This would be instead of the early elections Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had initially scheduled for September 2012. Already the longest serving government in 20 years, the expanded government coalition will enjoy a 78% majority in parliament and therefore we expect it will deliver political stability for the next 18 months. In our opinion, early elections would have raised uncertainties over the passage of the upcoming budget, the progress of public debt consolidation, and the overall predictability of policymaking. We believe domestic policy should provide greater continuity in that we expect parliament will maintain the legislative calendar, and that the next budget will reflect the government's medium-term debt consolidation plans. However, the inclusion of the centrist Kadima party could herald changes in foreign policy. In particular, as a broad "national unity" coalition, the government would have a stronger mandate to launch a military strike on Iran, though we still consider this to be a very unlikely scenario in the short term.

You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at blogtrottr.com. If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions