A controversial dimension of the financial crisis has been the role of credit ratings and the perverse incentives facing rating organizations.

The Shadow Committee believes that the best approach to the reform of credit rating organizations is to remove ratings from the regulatory process. If that is not done, then a minimal reform would be to mandate that the SEC's regulatory use of ratings be made conditional on the achievement by individual rating agencies of objective performance benchmarks.

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

The Securities and Exchange Commission should revise its certification standards to permit other qualified firms to become nationally recognized statistical rating organizations.

Just when the mainstream media thought that Barack Obama was pulling ahead in the polls, with positive job ratings, and just after the media have been savaging Republicans for two words Rush Limbaugh uttered on his radio program, Obama's numbers seem to be tanking.

Two years after its enactment, ObamaCare remains unpopular, unaffordable and unworkable. This week, three days of oral argument before the Supreme Court should confirm that it’s also unconstitutional.

It is good that we will have some disclosure of the mega-donors to the spate of super PACs that have dominated the landscape and the airtime across the presidential primaries and caucuses so far — but it is ridiculous that reporting requirements are so lame that the first disclosure in six months will not come until after the Florida primary.

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...