More than 15 years after the financial market collapse in 2008 it is worth asking whether one of the market’s umpires--namely, the credit ratings agencies--have improved their performance.
While there is no shortage of actors with some modicum of culpability in the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the reluctance of S&P and Fitch--which provide the market with credit ratings for a wide variety of debt instruments--to anger their clients by daring to issue unfavorable ratings ultimately led to hundreds of billions of dollars flowing into collateralized debt securities and other ostensibly safe instruments that were anything but, which contributed greatly to the morass that ensued.
Read Full Article »
