Given their well-known incorruptibility and infallibility, is it any wonder that ratings agencies would take exception to any suggestion that they might do wrong?
Well, that’s exactly what those outback yahoos in Australia seem to be implying. So Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s are picking up (most of) their toys and going home, withdrawing their applications to offer corporate debt ratings. The lily-white ratings agencies object to a new rule, coming into force on Jan 1., that would turn over disputes between the all-knowing and their idiot retail investor clients to a financial ombudsman.
But that “would effectively be second-guessing S&P’s analysts,” S&P cries! “This would ultimately create investor confusion and harm financial markets.” And S&P has never done anything like that.
ratings agencies you can trust
What a day for Ken Lewis & Co.! First, one of the savviest hedge fund managers out there gives BofA a big thumbs up (take that, Steve Cohen and Jim Simons). Next, someone we’ve actually heard of kinda sorta suggested he might take the Worst Job on Wall Street (BofA is, after all, a public company).
Now, the very ratings agency that kneecapped UBS earlier today said it is not quite as pessimistic about BofA.
Moody’s Investors Service said that Bank of America doesn’t suck quite as much as some people may have suggested, upgrading the outlook on its financial strength regulation. Sure, it upgraded it from the ominous-sounding D to the not-exactly-confidence-inspiring C-minus, but that’s better than D, right?
