Rating agencies

Here is an update on the state of the ratings industry. Phenomenally different and, yet, phenomenally the same as three years ago (this blog had plenty of entries about CRAs during the crisis)! It is different because the CRAs are doing well - really well actually.... It is the same because the industry still consists of a select trio of firms who have all the market share together with the 'well-documented' bad incentives in creating biased ratings on pretty much all the economy. The real difference is that we are not in a crisis but in a boom so no-one cares. Yet the flawed structure and framework of the ratings industry has been left in place and will produce the same controversies in the next downturn as it did in the last.