NEW YORK (Standard&Poor's CreditWire) Nov. 30, 2000--Standard&Poor's today assigned its ra-double-`A' national scale rating to the Republic of Argentina. The outlook is stable. Additionally, Standard&Poor's lowered its ratings on entities or issues that have credit quality directly dependent upon the performance of Argentine government securities to ra-double-`A' from ra-triple-`A'. Ratings on several entities remain on CreditWatch with negative implications (see list). Standard&Poor's has recently taken actions on various global scale ratings in Argentina, including the lowering of the country's foreign currency sovereign credit rating to double-`B'-minus from double-`B', and the local currency sovereign credit rating to double-`B' from triple-`B'-minus on Nov. 14, 2000. Given the deterioration in credit quality among Argentine issuers,
