Its ships and aircraft can rescue stranded nationals.

After all, if markets truly believed that the ECB would refuse to backstop errant governments, investors would run away from participating countries at the first sign that conditionality was not being met.

But the symbolic significance of S P s assessment was huge, for it underscored an inescapable truth worries about public debt that were once confined to a few delinquent countries are now bearing down on the world s biggest and richest economies.

The foreclosure relief plan is off to an even slower start, and is likely to run into numerous problems concerning how to rework delinquent mortgages without inducing a lot more delinquencies.