I will very irregularly have any time for a full post over the next few weeks due to work pressures. I seem to be spending most of my time here trying to sort out one commenter on what I believe to be his misunderstandings of banking. Oh well.

Just for your reading pleasure, though, I read a very good post regarding the role and future of the Credit Ratings Agencies on the usually excellent “The Sheet” today. Have a read – it is worth it.

Conclusion:

The agencies proved that they are poor at rating complex structured finance products. Their approach to rating sub-prime mortgage backed securities was not sufficiently rigorous and their models for assessing other more complex products were inadequate.

By virtue of this, their opinions on these products should now be viewed as being of little value and the market should effectively withdraw the agencies’ ‘licence’ to rate such products. This will open the door for new specialist structured finance ratings agencies to enter the market.

This seems a better approach than more regulation and the unintended consequences that could result.

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