Sarkozy tries to ignore debt rating

French President Nicolas Sarkozy shrugged off his country’s loss of its prized triple A rating for its debt in his first public comments on last week’s downgrade.

Standard & Poor’s lowered its rating of the country’s debt on Friday on concerns over its economy and Europe’s ability to deal with its debt problems. Since then Mr Sarkozy has avoided directly commenting on the downgrade, relying instead on his finance minister and prime minister to downplay the loss.