Oh, to be a credit rater. What fun it would be to have that big fountain pen which crosses out a country's current rating and replaces it with something else, something more than likely to be worth less when viewed by people who want to invest in your country.

Then, when it's knocked the stuffing out of confidence in the likes of Portugal, Greece and the Republic, it goes and downgrades the very bailout fund set up to, well, bail them out.

The head of the European Financial Stability Facility said yesterday that Standard and Poor's downgrade of the fund won't have an impact on it and sure enough Japan has been confident enough to buy €120m worth of six-month bonds.

But you can't help thinking that puncturing the lifeboat won't do much good in the long run to either the bailout fund, the countries which it's trying to bailout or its neighbours.

Worse still, it's not doing us any favours.

Combined with taking the deep shagpile rug that was a AAA rating out from under France's beslippered feet, it has eroded confidence in the region's economy even more (if that were possible) and forced the euro lower.

A level of 80p to €1 had been on the cards if you listen to foreign exchange commentators and that would have meant Northern Ireland's exporters having to fight even harder when competing in the Republic and the wider eurozone.

But a funny thing happened yesterday afternoon.

The euro put in a pretty impressive late rally which had traders scratching their heads for a while, one which turned out to have been caused by China.

Although the world's second largest economy had reported a slide in year-on-year growth yesterday, the 8.9% figure was still pretty impressive. Certainly the markets thought so - and we'd give our right arm for growth at even half that level.

The rally was put down to the fact that, quite frankly, staggering growth in China reflects well on the global economy as a whole, something which is not just good for Europe but also good news for the likes of us.

Thanks goodness then for China.

It's helped Northern Ireland exporters in the short-term and looks to be once again leading the rest of the world out of recession like a modern day Pied Piper.