Everyone remembers Standard and Poors? They were the only credit rater to downgrade America’s debt during last summer’s debt crises. Of course the question arose in everyone’s mind, gee, why didn’t the other two follow suit, which upon investigation, it was proven that Standard and Poors made a miscalculation…

When confronted with details of that gross miscalculation by the Treasury Department, Standard and Poors, said.. “well, despite our having made a mistake, we are keeping it the erroneous rating intact.. ” …

If you remember, up until their announcement, the markets were surprising us by rebounding, over the positive discussion coming out of the political summit on Capitol Hill.

Expectation was that someone on their inside, had bet the wrong way and then, had to throw the race in order not to lose it all….

This time, the France episode was blamed on a computer error.

It said that in December 2010, it had placed its Banking Industry Country Risk Assessment (BICRA) for France on the company’s main Global Credit Portal.

They did this as a test, but eventually did not place the other country BICRA rankings on the portal.

When S&P on Thursday issued a new review of BICRA rankings, the ranking page for France on the portal automatically was made “N/A”, or “not available”.

That triggered emails to subscribers notifying them of a downgrade of France, which has a top-flight AAA rating, sparking short-lived havoc in the markets before S&P sent out a correction.

“The system mistakenly interpreted this change as a ‘downgrade’ and triggered a message to a limited number of subscribers who had signed up to receive e-mail alerts,” S&P said.

S&P has since reiterated France’s rating of “AAA/A-1+’ with a stable outlook.”

So, again, a generic programming mistake affecting only one country. And the downgrade came at just when the markets were rebounding at the news that Greece and Italy were fixing their problems,…

Did someone again, bet the wrong way?

One time could be an accident. But twice?

The supposed mistake contributed to the worst day for France’s government bonds since before the euro was launched in 1999.

Hmmmmm, now if someone just happened to KNOW this was going to happen…. Hmmmmm…

(Remember: It’s been twice.)

When countries start having their entire investment futures controlled by someone in the top 1%, it is probably time to begin changing the rules affecting that 1%… Don’t you think?