U.S. stock futures slipped Thursday, as Standard & Poor's move to lower the credit-rating outlook on Britain raised fears that a downgrade of the U.S. government's debt rating could be coming soon as well. S&P 500 futures slipped 6 points to 893.90 and Nasdaq 100 futures fell 9.75 points to 1,382.70. Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 43 points. U.S. stocks dropped on Wednesday, with the Dow industrials falling 52 points, the Nasdaq Composite falling 6 points and the S&P 500 losing 4 points. Minutes from the last Federal Reserve rate-setting meeting showed the central bank worried about the economic outlook and the potential for further shocks to the financial system. Standard & Poor's affirmed the U.K.'s credit rating at AAA but lowered its outlook to negative from stable, citing the potential that government debt may equal the country's output. The worse a country's credit rating, the more expensive it is to borrow. "If Wall Street is going to behave today as it has been behaving lately, my guess is that there will be an initial reaction to this -- which will be thumbs down right across the market," said Mike Lenhoff, chief strategist at U.K. brokerage Brewin Dolphin. "Other markets may think that what's happened in the U.K. may be coming their way too." Like the U.K., U.S. public spending has swelled, the country's central bank has embarked on quantitative easing and interest rates are at ultra-low levels in reaction to the credit-led recession. "We would expect all the major G7 economies to suffer downgrades," said Stuart Thompson, chief economist at Ignis Asset Management in Glasgow, Scotland. "There's a lot of finger crossing going on among the authorities," he added. "Everybody is resting on hope at the moment and the way the lagged impact of the stimulus work, we should get some growth next year, but I don't see it being sustained." The S&P move made the biggest impact on U.K. asset classes, with British bonds dropping in price, the FTSE 100 stock market index falling over 2% and the British pound falling against the dollar. The dollar traded in a tight range vs. the Japanese yen and the euro after recent losses. Crude-oil futures fell by more than $1 a barrel, and gold futures rose $2.50 an ounce. The market also will be awaiting for weekly jobless claims, which are due at 8:30 a.m. Eastern, as well as Philadelphia-area manufacturing gauge for May and leading economic indicators for April that are due at 10 a.m. Of stocks in the spotlight, Hertz (HTZ 6.76, -1.38, -16.95%) was up marginally to $6.77 after pricing an offering of close to $1 billion worth of stock. MF Global (MF 5.43, -0.30, -5.24%) slipped 5% after reporting a widening fiscal fourth-quarter loss. Also of note, the Financial Times reported that Bank of America (BAC 11.49, +0.24, +2.13%) was looking to pay $45 billion of government funds by the end of the year. In Asia, where most markets didn't get a chance to react to the S&P news, the Nikkei 225 fell 0.9% and the Hang Seng lost 1.6%. The yen's recent strength vs. the dollar hurt exporters in Japan.

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