Markets: The Credit Rating Agencies
Journal: The Journal of Economic Perspectives
Year: 2010

This paper will explore how the financial regulatory structure propelled three credit rating agencies—Moody's, Standard &amp; Poor's (S&amp;P), and Fitch—to the center of the U.S. bond markets—and thereby virtually guaranteed that when these rating agencies did make mistakes, these mistakes would have serious consequences for the financial sector. We begin by looking at some relevant history of the industry, including the series of events that led financial regulators to outsource their judgment