By Greg Peel

The Dow closed up 140 points or 1.3% while the S&P gained 1.4% to 1188 and the Nasdaq added 1.6%.

When will anyone ever learn? So slow are ratings agencies to catch up with what's going on around them that we cannot even be sure Moody's downgrading yesterday of the ratings of Societe Generale and Credit Agricole ? two of France's largest banks ? was not related to the Second World War. And Moody's in particular has a reputation of being the slowest of the three major agencies, but then again that's like being the fattest bloke on The Biggest Loser.

Ask yourself: why is the Australian stock market down 20% from its April high? Might the answer have anything to do with Europe? Perhaps Greece, and its possibility of default, might be part of that? And who, as we have long known, holds a lot of Greek sovereign debt? Oh yes ? the French banks.

Let's take SocGen for one. Since March its share price has fallen 72%. It is a truth universally acknowledged that SocGen will need an injection of capital in order to survive any restructuring of eurozone sovereign debt ? haircuts or default, orderly or disorderly. Yet now, and only now, have the Moody's analysts realised perhaps SocGen's credit isn't quite as good as it was. Brilliant! Next they be telling us Enron's looking dodgy.