Let the credit rating agencies rate, and us learn, again, just to take the credit ratings for what they are.

Sir with respect to your “Holding the rating agencies to account” November 6, there are only two alternatives: 

One is the caveat emptor route of taking the credit ratings for what they are, always subject to the possibility of human fallibility, of one or any sort, and always subject to some uncertainness which is very hard or even impossible to measure, and all for which the ratings should be handled with care. In this case, the best regulators can do, is to append a label stating: “Warning: excessive reliance on credit ratings can be extremely dangerous to the health of your portfolio.” And, the worst thing what regulators can do, is precisely to give the ratings the credibility and importance these were given in Basel II. 

The other route is that of “we must make them work” no matter what. Yes, if a credit rater had just gone out of his office for one single day to see how the mortgages that formed part of the securities he was rating, these would not have been AAA rated, and that I swear. But, since the rater preferred the comfort of his office to the subprime suburbs¸ just as you and I do, he did not go there. And so should he now be sued? Perhaps, but if you hope to get something remotely substantial out of him, you must hope he is able o enlist the support of Bernanke and Draghi. 

And here is the “sophisticated” Financial Times going for the second option and writing “Things will only change once ratings are regulated more rigorously and paid for by investors rather than issuers”. I am amazed that FT has descended into such primitive naiveté… just for starter what would a credit rating cost if the raters needed to insure themselves against any sort of malpractice. 

Really, if anyone should be held accountable in this case that should be the bank regulators, they must have known the risks. In a letter that you yourself published in FT in January 2003 I told them that “Everyone knows that, sooner or later, the ratings issued by the credit agencies are just a new breed of systemic errors, about to be propagated at modern speeds” 

No! Let the credit rating agencies rate, and us learn, again, just to take the credit ratings for what they are.

PS. The current S&P and Kroll duet “Anything you can rate, I can rate better I can rate anything better than you No, you can’t Yes, I can”