But members of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's ruling Social Democratic Party suggested last month that the rift between Berlin and Washington influenced Standard & Poor's to downgrade steelmaker ThyssenKrupp.

This international incident started in late February when S&P downgraded ThyssenKrupp two notches to junk status because of its pension liabilities. The reduction -- recommended by S&P Germany head Torsten Hinrichs -- prompted Rainer Wend, leader of the German Parliament's economics committee, to speculate that "tensions in transatlantic diplomacy could, even indirectly, influence ratings decisions." Added Dietrich Jahn, a deputy director general of the Finance Ministry, a "European agency of S&P's stature" is needed.

"We are always being criticized by either investors or issuers," sighs the 44-year-old Hinrichs, who grew up near Freiburg in Germany's Black Forest. But he admits that the stealth attack "was a surprise." Emotions quickly cooled, however, and Jahn later told II that his remarks about a new agency were more a hope than a policy objective.

Even so, SDP politicians believe that, in the words of party parliamentary spokesman Joachim Poss, S&P doesn't "understand Germany's economic culture."

Hinrichs, who spent 15 years at Westdeutsche Landesbank in treasury and capital markets before joining the credit rating agency in 1999, acknowledges that S&P has a stricter formula for calculating the credit risk of unfunded pensions than most German companies or even rivals Moody's and Fitch. But he says accusations that he and his colleagues don't understand Germany -- and respond to U.S. foreign policy -- are absurd. "We have 55 employees here; 48 are German, and the remainder are European," says Hinrichs. If nothing else, he notes, "adding politicians to our list of critics at least underlines our independence as a ratings agency."