washington he's a blogger and writer and a former wall street executive also in washington we have mark calabria he is director of financial regulation studies at the capitol institute and in philadelphia we cross to gary which he is assistant professor of finance and statistics at temple university and former moody's managing director or a gentleman this is cross talk that means you can jump in anytime you want and i very much encourage it but first let's have a look at some of the controversy surrounding the rating agencies. last week u.s. rating agency standard and poor's said it was placing fifteen euro zone member states including germany and france on negative watch with the possibility of a downgrade it did so ahead of the european council meeting where angle marco and nicolas sarkozy were supposed to thrash out a response to the european debt crisis this is that some critics to believe the agency is exerting pressure on the european council and trying to influence the course of the talks the financial crisis will be causing in the eurozone is no longer a crisis of individual countries on