Government Ratings Agency: A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Idea

IBD's Capital Hill ^ | 5/5/2010 | Ed Carson

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The European Commission on Tuesday said it will probe credit agencies and even suggested it might take over the job of rating countries’ sovereign debt.

No question, Moody’s (MCO), Standard & Poor’s (MHP) and Fitch failed miserably in analyzing mortgage securities, slapping AAA ratings on home loan packages that often turned out to be filled with junk. Issuers pay the agencies for their ratings, a clear conflict of interest.

So there’s been favorable talk of a state-run ratings body, and not just in Europe. Ezra Klein, liberal blogger for the Washington Post, liked the concept, writing that, if anything, “a public rating agency might be too conservative.”

Oh, really?

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Story discusses: 1. parallel between credit agencies' ratings of mortgage securities to ObamaCare's manipulation of CBO. 2. How evidence shows that Congress would have prevented any effort by public ratings agency to downgrade Fannie, Freddie or anything else that might have reined in credit/housing boom. 3. how state-run agency would discourage ratings cuts of gov't debt and politically favored companies. 4. govt-run ratings agency might make investors feel that the gov't implicitly stands behind the ratings, making potential financial bubbles and bailouts even worse.

[mlocher]

The European Commission on Tuesday said it will probe credit agencies and even suggested it might take over the job of rating countries’ sovereign debt.

Good luck with that.

[Pollster1]

I would completely ignore government ratings of government or corporate debt. Why would we trust politics to give us financial truth?

[Uncle Miltie]

I think its a fine idea.

Absolutely nobody will pay attention to government debt ratings. So, debt holders will have to do their own due diligence.

Not a problem.

[maddogconservative]

But to say the current model is optimal is nonsense at best.

Somebody better offer a better solution or the Government will take over.

Remember, it’s all those guys who got the Bailouts in 2008 are the ones saying “We don’t need no regulation.”

[Buckeye McFrog]

and once this starts, it cannot be stopped

(look for the Democrats here to go after the very notion of Credit Bureaus and Credit Ratings once they get really desperate in their scrounging for votes)

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

Ha! You have a good point. But it would be difficult to imagine a setup that screams “game me!” and invites bribery and corruption louder than this would. Not that we’re slouching in that area as it is.

[prairiebreeze]

ping for later read

[Tzimisce]

So there you have it: governments don’t want to lose their AAA ratings.