Moody’s Investors Service assigned a negative outlook to the creditworthiness of all local governments in the United States, the agency said Tuesday, the first time it had ever issued such a blanket report on municipalities, the New York Times reports.

The report signaled how severely the economic downturn was affecting towns, counties and school districts across the nation.

While Moody’s regularly reports on the financial strength of various sectors of private industry, its analysts have in the past considered America’s tens of thousands of towns and local authorities too diverse for generalizations.

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