Is this the same Standard & Poors that gave the OK to US sub-prime debt?

Pretty much my reaction as well. They’ve rather diluted their authoritas.

Ai Group NSW director Mark Goodsell described the collapse of the sell-off as “massively disappointing” and “dangerous for the state”.

NSW now faced an uncertain future in terms of its power supply, he said.

“Whatever is happening politically, the bottom line is, tomorrow morning, the government is going to have to make a decision about building two power stations which are going to cost upwards of $10 billion,” Mr Goodsell said.

“It doesn’t have the money and it is going to come out of schools, transport and other infrastructure budgets or alternatively, the state will start to go into dangerous levels of debt.”

Mr Goodsell said electricity sector privatisation had occurred in every other state where it was introduced as a means to enable greater government spending in health, education, and public transport.

The private sector was now effectively barred from helping the NSW government cope with its rising infrastructure costs, he said.

“The business community is not only dismayed that it has happened, it is confused by how it has happened because anybody who understands government finances and the energy issue thinks there was no alternative to privatisation,” Mr Goodsell said.

“NSW now has a very dangerous situation where it can’t invite the private sector to help fund this important infrastructure and it doesn’t have the money in the forward estimates of the budget to do it itself.”

Ai Group is an industry body representing the state’s manufacturers and other major users of electricity.