November 09, 2007

We might be better off ignoring the credit rating agencies

Sir Gillian Tett in “It’s no wonder agencies are so jumpy over monoline saga” November 9, mentions that Fitch has sort of graciously conceded the “monolines a period of time in which they can raise fresh capital to avoid downgrades”. What financial Frankenstein’s monsters have our regulators created?

Where do they get the powers from to give this sort of instructions while simultaneously telling us that they are only giving opinions and which in terms of the First Amendment means they are not responsible for anything? Perhaps the best we can do is for all regulators to give immediate orders to the market to ignore anything the credit rating agencies say and then take it from there.