The Credit Rating Agencies: How Did We Get Here? Where Should We Go?

Lawrence White, Apr 17, 2012

The three major credit rating agencies-Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s (“S&P”), and Fitch-have attracted an increasing amount of media attention over the past five years. They were clearly central players in the housing bubble and collapse of the late 1990s through the mid 2000s and the financial debacle that followed, and they have more recently gained notoriety in downgrading the debt of various European countries-with S&P even downgr