The three major rating agencies are reassessing banks' credit risk in the light of the recent crisis. So far, this has resulted in material downgrades, especially of European and US institutions, and increased agreement about banks' overall level of creditworthiness and their greater dependence...

We examine in a unified framework three recent perspectives on country risk=debt intolerance, original sin, and currency mismatches. We find statistical evidence supporting aspects of all three, though the strength of that support varies considerably across hypotheses and a number of open...