SIR – Who gave these ratings agencies such as Standard and Poor the power to downgrade 11 European countries including Austria and France?

The downgrading will massively increase the cost of government borrowing, meaning that more redundancies and cuts in the hard-pressed nations involved and may cause the unravelling of the eurozone, which is Britain’s main trading partner.

In 2008 the banks virtually bankrupted themselves through sheer corporate greed and corruption, governments bailed them out but got themselves in financial difficulty and had to go cap-in-hand to the very banks they had bailed out for loans.

And what was the role of the rating agencies, which are all US-based, in this crisis? The truth is these “financial experts” caused it.

Before 2008, it was these very rating agencies that classed as “AAA” the millions of dodgy derivatives full of worthless sub-prime loans that caused the meltdown.

And which currency in the world will benefit if the euro collapses? The US dollar.

Max Hey, Fairway Grove, Bradford