Could the world’s financial nannies get away with anything?

Sir, the bank regulators of the world decided over the last decades to give some few credit rating agencies an immense role channelling the financial flows of the world. No matter what their reasons, I have always suspected it had mostly to do with some laid-off Soviet central planners migrating to Basel; they surely must have expected the credit rating agencies to behave in a responsible and accountable way. Now, when we hear these same agencies argue that all they do is opine and that their opinions are protected by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, those two basic premises do not necessarily seem so valid. Since any responsible parent, no matter how much they might trust their nanny would never want to leave their children in the custody of someone who thinks she could get away with anything, we now eagerly await what the regulators have to say about all this. Or do they just don’t care?