The major credit rating agencies have been widely criticized for their role in the international bust and liquidity panic in the markets for structured mortgages and other complex securities. Critics continue to question the effectiveness of rating agency performance, incentives, and oversight. Currently, numerous regulations mandate that investors use credit...

Regulation is necessary to overcome perverse incentives and ensure the quality of corporate governance ratings, which are important to institutional investors, managers, and their clients.

It is old news that the S&P rating agency downgraded the US foreign-credit rating from the coveted AAA to the less impressive AA+ on August 5. But as Republicans look ahead to the possibility that they might defeat Obama, they will inevitably seek ways to recover the exalted AAA status. If history is any guide, repairing the damage done to the U.S. bond rating will be a long, hard slog.

The SEC should revoke its requirement that Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations must make the records of their rating actions public.

The collapse of the market for subprime mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and other complex derivative securities created a panic among the global investors and short-term lenders who finance such assets, resulting in large losses for investment funds and banks around the world. Critics claim that the major rating agencies failed to...

The Securities and Exchange Commission designates certain credit rating agencies as “nationally recognized statistical ratings organizations” (NRSROs). It has been argued that this designation inhibits competition and has effectively created a government-sponsored cartel. Currently only two firms—Standard and Poor’s and Moody’s—represent about eighty percent of sector revenue. In an effort...

The Shadow Financial Regulatory Committee comments on the SEC's proposed rules implementing provisions of the Credit Rating Agency Reform Act of 2006.

Awritten comment submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission with regard to oversight of credit rating agencies, File No. S7-04-07.