May 30, 2008

Rating the rating agencies would be just digging us deeper in the hole.

The last thing we need is to create even more illusion that nothing can go wrong piling on top of current realities the concept of an AAA rated credit rating agency.

Sir, “Who rates the ratings agencies?” May 30, starts from the premise that the credit rating agencies need to keep the immense powers that regulators have awarded them and that they therefore need to get better. You are wrong on that! The way to go is to reduce the powers of the credit rating agencies and so that the rest of the market have better incentives to analyze credits, for instance banks could instead of rating readers and rating predictors employ credit analyst again.

If the banks were just needed to report as an information the minimum capital requirements as judged on the basis of the assessments of the credit rating agencies but were actually not forced to apply these capital requirements, and for example go for a fixed percentage of capital to credit instead, then that would make of credit rating agencies what they are supposed to be, information providers, and not what they are, regulation enforcers.