Berating the Raters

Let’s hear it for the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Its work on the financial crisis is increasingly looking like the 21st-century version of the Pecora hearings, which helped usher in New Deal-era financial regulation. In th...

Berating the Raters

The rating agencies should be chosen, by lottery, by the SEC and paid for by the company needing the service. The repeat business and the fees that they get should depend on their accuracy. If a company wants to independently hire a rating company to help develop a business plan, fine, but when the information will be used to inform the investing public about the true value of a security, that service must be independent of the company needing the service. The investing public has a right to know the true nature of the risks they are taking. By the way, these rating agencies have been responsible for past scandals, like Enron for one (that one reduced my retirement income by 25%, thank you very much). Are there any honest analysts out there who might want to start a new rating agency to compete with these crooks?

Berating the Raters

The rating agencies should be chosen, by lottery, by the SEC and paid for by the company needing the service. The repeat business and the fees that they get should depend on their accuracy. If a company wants to independently hire a rating company to help develop a business plan, fine, but when the information will be used to inform the investing public about the true value of a security, that service must be independent of the company needing the service. The investing public has a right to know the true nature of the risks they are taking. By the way, these rating agencies have been responsible for past scandals, like Enron for one (that one reduced my retirement income by 25%, thank you very much). Are there any honest analysts out there who might want to start a new rating agency to compete with these crooks?

Berating the Raters

The rating agencies should be chosen, by lottery, by the SEC and paid for by the company needing the service. The repeat business and the fees that they get should depend on their accuracy. If a company wants to independently hire a rating company to help develop a business plan, fine, but when the information will be used to inform the investing public about the true value of a security, that service must be independent of the company needing the service. The investing public has a right to know the true nature of the risks they are taking. By the way, these rating agencies have been responsible for past scandals, like Enron for one (that one reduced my retirement income by 25%, thank you very much). Are there any honest analysts out there who might want to start a new rating agency to compete with these crooks?

Berating the Raters

The rating agencies should be chosen, by lottery, by the SEC and paid for by the company needing the service. The repeat business and the fees that they get should depend on their accuracy. If a company wants to independently hire a rating company to help develop a business plan, fine, but when the information will be used to inform the investing public about the true value of a security, that service must be independent of the company needing the service. The investing public has a right to know the true nature of the risks they are taking. By the way, these rating agencies have been responsible for past scandals, like Enron for one (that one reduced my retirement income by 25%, thank you very much). Are there any honest analysts out there who might want to start a new rating agency to compete with these crooks?

Have you never been conned? It has happened to me several times. Here it has happened to much of the nation or at least their representatives in local government and Labor unions.

In a con there is a person known as a shill. His function is too demonstrate the eas of play and the certainty of wining. In the financial con we are living through the G.O.P. has acted as the shill. The shill takes the heat and acts innocent as the artist goes off with the marks money. Later the con artist splits with the shill because they are in fact conspiritors.

I feel like I am a mark. As such my best move is passive resistance to the conspiracy. I will let my money rest in as much safety as I can devise and try to not be caught up in the riot that is sure to start soon. I hope that there are oporrtunities to profit in the chaos we are commited to.

Some very clever people have been working hard over the last 95 or so years to make our present fix a reality. I would not deny them the wages of their sin.