We believe U.S. Bancorp (USB) should continue to outperform peers, delivering consistent revenue and earnings while maintaining a conservative growth strategy and solid capitalization. Supporting our expectation, we believe home prices are nearing a bottom in the U.S. This should enable USB's outperformance to continue, which the company's above-peer reserves to nonperforming loans and improving credit trends should support, in addition to its minimal exposure to mortgage putbacks, litigation, and pressures from the eurozone. We are raising our long-term issuer credit rating on USB to 'A+' from 'A' and affirming our 'A-1' short-term issuer credit rating. At the same time, we are raising our issuer credit rating on its operating subsidiaries to 'AA-' from 'A+' and our short-term issuer credit
