So, Standard & Poor's has downgraded Italy's rating from A+ to A ... and so what? Financial markets have been trading form months at yields that imply an even lower rating. Even ignoring that Italy's government bonds are substantially supported by ECB's purchases, current yields would imply an even lower rating of BBB. Is the downgrading really an issue? From the international investor's point of view probably not, but from the domestic side it could be. Small private investors are still, at least partially, investing in Italy's government bonds, though with a lot more doubts and perplexity than only a few months ago. News like the one of today's, might just dent the investment intentions of the last group who is sustaining the Italian debt through regular subscriptions of new issues. In the next few weeks we will be waiting for Moody's decision on a possible downgrade. Should also the other big agency decide to downgrade Italy, a part from the usual, useless and instrumental criticism by politicians, the public opinion's perception could start to deteriorate further. Future auctions could therefore become even more complicated for the Italian Treasury. In the mean time talking to other market professionals, the main hope of many seem to lie on emerging countries (China? Brazil? India?), that would buy massive sizes of Italian debt to avoid a "global market meltdown". How probable can this scenario be? To me this is just a sign of how few options seem to remain on the table.