Our rating wasn’t simply under threat in 1991, we actually were downgraded from AA to AA-. In fact I’ve heard that a two-notch downgrade was a very real possibility at the time.

Our credit rating was very much under threat in 1990/91 as well – hence the speed of the action from the National government.

If we get downgraded and the UK isn’t I will feel pretty damn ripped 😉

It’s possible, as far as the credit rating goes. In 1991, the need to spend hundreds of millions on bailing out the BNZ (again) made a rating downgrade inevitable.

This time, it feels like the chance of a downgrade is very much up in the air – and what makes it even more significant is that it would mark the first time in this recession that a developed country was downgraded purely because of its spending behaviour. The UK and US have avoided downgrades even with their horrendous deficits, and even in Ireland it took the nationalisation of half the banking system and the creation of a ‘bad bank’ to stir the rating agencies into action.