What about some more fundamental accountability?

Sir, what a creditor really wants to know from a credit analysis is how much money he risks to lose given that there is a world of difference between a debtor who can only repay ten cents on the dollar and one who, though defaulting, repays 90 cents. According to Paul J Davies and David Oakley, “New stress on recovery for rating agencies” (October 5) this is what the credit rating agencies now planning to do, about a decade after they were handed over the extremely profitable franchise of measuring the risks for the market and it begs the question of what to do with all the then useless ratings given until now. Could the credit rating agencies be sued? Furthermore the fact of changes in ratings that have nothing to do with changes in debtors but only with changes in the criteria used by the raters, illustrates perfectly the immense systemic risks bank regulators imposed on the world, ever since they arrogantly thought themselves capable of controlling risks.

credit rating agencies