S&P Jumps Into Politics Warning EU Downgrades Before Summit

Standard & Poor’s, rebuked by Warren Buffett in August after downgrading the U.S. over government gridlock, is again injecting itself into the political process, just as European leaders are poised to meet for a summit aimed at ending the region’s sovereign-debt crisis.

The ratings firm put Germany, France and 13 other euro-area nations on review for a downgrade yesterday, saying “continuing disagreements among European policy makers on how to tackle” the region’s debt crisis risk damaging their financial stability. The move came four months after S&P cut the U.S. to AA+, saying “extremely difficult” political discussions over how to reduce America’s more than $1 trillion budget deficit tainted the credit quality of the world’s largest economy.