Encouraging comments from SEC chair Mary Schapiro:
“The Securities and Exchange Commission has created a new group of examiners to oversee credit rating agencies, which came under sharp criticism for their role during the financial crisis.
The SEC has already adopted a number of measures to increase transparency at credit rating agencies, which are paid by the issuers they rate. But greater oversight is needed with officials expected to conduct both routine and special examinations of their activities, Ms Schapiro is set to tell a Congressional oversight hearing on Tuesday.
The plan is part of a wide range of structural changes being made at the SEC, which has faced withering criticism in the past year for its oversight of financial firms and ratings agencies as well as for failing to detect the Bernard Madoff fraud in spite of credible allegations brought to it for at least a decade.”
Now, we need to open the Ratings Agencies up to competition, and eliminate their special SEC status.
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Source:
SEC to create group to check rating agencies
Joanna Chung
FT, July 13 2009
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/ea7d1208-6ff6-11de-b835-00144feabdc0.html
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