Should we then go after the intellectual perpetrators?

Sir, John Dizard in “A reform unlikely to dent rating agencies’ armour”, April 17, mentions that the credit rating agencies believe they are immune from legal liability from their work because now matter how careless they are, for instance when rating mortgage backed securities without even doing a representative survey on how those mortgage loans were awarded, their “opinions are protected speech under the Constitution.” I am no expert on constitutional issues to opine on this but, whether that is true or false, I do not believe any constitution would allow for forcing people to obey the ramblings of the opinionated, and so perhaps then we would need to go after the intellectual perpetrators, namely those financial sector regulators who have found it convenient to delegate so much power into so very few hands.