A brief story from the world of international finance that didn’t get a lot of attention, especially with tensions between Turkey and the US over Turkey’s purchase of a Russian air-defense system.

Moody’s cut Turkey’s sovereign credit rating deeper into “junk” territory on Friday, saying the risk of a balance of payments crisis continued to rise, and with it the risk of a government default.

Moody’s downgraded the rating to B1 from Ba3 and maintained a negative outlook. It cut the rating to Ba3 from Ba2 in August last year.

reuters.com

This hits Turkey’s already tottering economy even harder, because if the rating is in the “speculative” zone, large institutional investors, things like pension funds, cannot invest in the country’s bonds.