February 19, 2008

How the Financial Times got duped

If the Bank of England had decided to appoint some bureaucrat to rate credits for the purpose of deciding how much capital the banks needed to set aside in order to be allowed to give any credit I am sure the Financial Times would be up in arms screaming something about a bloody central planning. But by outsourcing these exact same functions to the private credit rating agencies, the central planners managed to dupe the Financial Times into believing that this was indeed the voice of the market.

In the letter from Michael Djordjevich “The lessons of the sad demise of bond insurance” February 19, we read “Rating agencies that held the key to the future of this industry accepted this concept of intertwining two basically incompatible risks”. I wonder what it will take for a Financial Times to realize that a bureaucrat is still a bureaucrat and a human is still a human prone to human error no matter if he is in public or private employment.

Sir, please help us to get the central planning monopolies that the outsourced credit rating agencies really are out of the financial world. In just a few years the credit rating agencies have managed to turn themselves into one of the biggest systemic risk the world faces.