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Technology Stocks : WCOM -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: James Calladine who wrote (10744)	6/22/2002 11:08:09 AM
From: Oeconomicus	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 11568

it is a very SERIOUS situation when any company fails to meet its debt payments (interest OR principal) You should really read beyond the headlines of news stories. The securities WCOM decided to defer interest payments on where specifically designed to permit such deferral. In fact, the company can decide to defer interest for up to 20 consecutive quarters without penalty. This is not a default of any sort, much as the shorts would like to spin it that way. As for the rating agencies, if they actually looked at this objectively, they'd see that deferring interest payments on the securities where they have the option to do so without penalty actually improves the companies capacity to service other debts, the very ones the agencies downgraded. Capricious? Maybe that word doesn't fit, but overly cautious, or perhaps even biased, seems to describe their behavior very well.