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Was this really a surprise? Credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgraded Italy's debt to A from A+. S&P cites the obvious: weak economic growth and government dysfunction. S&P also said it's not a believer in the country's austerity program. [Financial Times]The most shocking part of the downgrade announcement is that S&P blamed Italy's austerity measures for hurting its economic growth. [Business Insider]Italy's Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi blames the media for the downgrade, apparently forgetting that he owns the media. [Adnkronos]Quote of the Day"I think you're going to see them draw on the lessons of our crisis, draw on the lessons of things that worked here in the United States," said U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. And that worked out incredibly well for the U.S., didn't it? [Bloomberg]Company NewsStat of the day: Citigroup(C) sent 346 million card offers to North American customers, more than one for every person in the U.S. [WSJ]One shareholder pleads with Yahoo!(YHOO) to consider a proposal to create three tracking stocks. [MarketWatch]Time Warner(TWX) should take a page out of Netflix's(NFLX) Qwickster playbook and consider spinning off some of its cable networks, the Wall Street Journal reported in its Heard on the Street column. [WSJ]MarketsWhen China doesn't even want to do business with you, it's bad, right? Well, Bank of China has reportedly halted foreign exchange swaps with some European banks. [Reuters]Consumer discretionary stocks continue to lead the market, even as the world falls apart. [All Star Charts]More money has been pulled from U.S. equity funds in the past four months ($75 billion) than in the five months after Lehman Brothers' collapse in 2008 ($72.8 billion). [Bloomberg]Investment StrategySkip TIPS and zero percent real return strategies and go after mega-cap dividend paying stocks. [iShares Blog]Using S&P 500 seasonality to determine whether to be bullish or bearish through the end of the year. [Bespoke Investment]Shorting the euro is a trade "not even a dummy can pass." [MarketWatch]Odds and EndsGeorge Soros hires Scott Bessent as new chief investment officer of his hedge fund, even as it returns money to investors. [New York Times DealBook]Perhaps Netflix(NFLX) should have checked all digital avenues, including Twitter, before unveiling Qwickster to the masses. [BBC]My excuse to my wife for playing more Call of Duty: online gamers figured out an AIDS enzyme puzzle that baffled scientists for a decade. [Yahoo!].>To follow Robert Holmes on Twitter, go to http://twitter.com/RobTheStreet.>To submit a news tip, send an email to: tips@thestreet.com.
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