How Credit Rating Agencies Are Detrimental to Society

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If there is one thing that scares a banker more than a subpoena from the Senate banking committee, it is a downgrade in the bank's credit rating.The Big Three ratings agencies are like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse for investors, municipalities, financial institutions, insurance companies, banks, even national governments. They make the ebola virus seem like a chocolate sundae. When you see them coming, hide the children and family valuables in the root cellar. Any downgrade from super terrific triple A, and Bay Street gets a violent attack of the vapours. This past week, Moody's Investors Service downgraded, ever so slightly, the ratings of Canada's largest banks. The stated reason was concern over volatility in the housing market and a lot of blather that the banks are, "more vulnerable to unpredictable downside risks facing the economy than in the past." The Big Three -- Moody's, Standard and Poor's and Fitch -- control something like 90 per cent of the ratings market. Their ratings are the single most important element in determining the value of a bond or a company or a portfolio. Investors cling to their findings like lint on Velcro. But leave us not forget that the credit raters got just about everything wrong leading up to the 2008 economic collapse. For example, the thousands of residential mortgages rated triple and double A by Standard and Poor's, more than 70 per cent were near or in default by the end of that year. And Moody's kept pumping out good news about Enron and didn't downgrade its value until the day before the company collapsed. Incidentally, Matt Taibbi, the much feared and much respected financial writer for Rolling Stone, calls Moody's, " the most whorishly corrupt ratings company in modern history." Since the 2008 meltdown, politicians and others have voiced concern about the immense power of the companies. In fact, the

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