Let us first get rid of the financial commissars

Sir Chris Giles in “Credit squeeze leaves a long shadow” October 17, says that “credit rating are in the spotlight for providing the same rating to complex structured products and simple corporation debt with very different structures assumptions and liquidity”. If this is what we believe the problem to be, just an error in calculations and that new and better technique could take care of, then we have not learned anything and we will just set ourselves up for even a worse financial Katrina than the current. The real fundamental problem starts with the appointment of the credit rating agencies as the financial commissars that the market must heed. We all know that just cannot end well.