As mentioned earlier at this site, I am not quite convinced by some jointly emitted bonds of the euro zone. Yesterday, Standard & Poor’s Managing Director of European Sovereign Ratings Moritz Kraemer stated that euro bonds would receive the lowest ranking - or at least the ranking of the weakest country.
“If it is a joint and not a several guarantee, then it would be the weakest link approach. If the euro bond is structured like this [smaller federal states that don’t have enough issuance volume “gang together” and “everyone guarantees just his own bit], and we have public criteria on that, the answer is very simple. If we have a euro bond where Germany guarantees 27 percent, France 20 percent and Greece 2 percent, then the rating of this euro bond would be CC, which is the rating of Greece.”Clearly, this would make the blue bond totally worthless and the whole idea ad absurdum.
See also: here and here
Update: After some discussion during our delicious dinner, how it could be that a bond would receive the least valuable rating instead of an "average-of-all-involved" rating, my dear colleague ls found this article at herdentrieb, which is exactly the solution we came up with (sorry to those who could not join our meal :-)
