It is almost a ritual. At some point in any credit crunch the ratings agencies – Moody’s, Fitch and Standard & Poor’s – are criticised for giving the problem debts high ratings in the first place and then for being too slow to downgrade. The ratings they gave to bonds backed by US subprime mortgages had problems but wholesale regulatory intervention does not make sense.
The European Commission wants to know why some bonds backed by subprime got high ratings and why others were not downgraded sooner. In the US, there are political rumblings in Congress as well.
