Archive for the ‘Rating Agencies’ Category
Saturday, July 12th, 2008
I’ve been waiting for thirty years. That’s when I first heard Milton Friedman predict that the real United States Deficit problem was not the one we all talk about. It is the one that will hit the fan when the Treasury assumes the Obligations of Freddie Mac and Fanny Mae, ...
Posted in Rating Agencies, Creative Accounting, When Regulation Goes Wrong | No Comments »
Wednesday, June 25th, 2008
God, but I’m good. Know how to tell? Just read the title of the May 24th post. OK, I’ll cite it myself – “The Rating Agencies: Are They Doomed?” Now we learn that the SEC is giving serious thought to cutting off the agencies’ government-mandated monopoly status. (WSJ, June 24, ...
Posted in Rating Agencies, Markets and Regulation | No Comments »
Saturday, May 31st, 2008
Most citizens, we are told, take a cynical view of both Wall Street and Washington. It has given life to the candidacy of Barak Obama, perhaps. Do people of experience with The Street trust Washington to fix the problem? I don’t. I’ll tell you why. We are addressing problems we ...
Posted in Rating Agencies, The Banking Crisis, Bank Management, Polticial Decisions Affecting Banking | No Comments »
Saturday, May 24th, 2008
The rating agencies have an interesting and distinguished history. I first focused on them when working for the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. We needed the permission of Standard and Poors Corporation to use their stock index to price our futures contract when it settled. Looking back at S&P’s decision to go ...
Posted in Rating Agencies, Computers Run Amok | No Comments »