The credit ratings agencies have been held accountable in two private suits.

Moreover, several African countries have received ratings from credit agencies, which has opened up global financial centers to them.

The obligations of certain organizations, such as the World Bank, are defined as quasi sovereign by the credit ratings agencies.

Poor 2012 corporate financial results will further undermine credit ratings.

Likewise, the ECB should have barred banks from the risky CDS market, where they are held hostage to ratings agencies decisions about what constitutes a credit event.

One of my favorite (sad) stories concerns consumer credit ratings in Russia.

Investors use credit ratings as a factor in pricing loans on bonds.

What is the modern equivalent of branding with a scarlet A, which was the penalty for adultery in colonial New England? Maybe the credit ratings agencies have the answer.

How could reputable ratings agencies and investment banks misjudge things so badly?

Bond rating agencies have issued misleading ratings on companies in questionable health.

Ratings agencies had incentives to give good ratings to the high risk securities produced by the investment banks that were paying them.

Regulators, bankers, and ratings agencies bear much of the blame for the crisis.

Another is that US ratings agencies helped fool the world by giving triple A ratings to their American clients, while aggressively downgrading foreign borrowers.

Indeed, the most curious aspect of the ECB s position was its threat not to accept restructured government bonds as collateral if the ratings agencies decided that the restructuring should be classified as a credit event.

A description of how credit ratings for a United Nations bond would be established is set out below.

After all, the global financial crisis badly damaged the credibility of ratings agencies as a whole.

It s natural that the state of global markets will have some kind of ripple effect, says Greg Kabance, managing director for Latin American structured finance at Fitch Ratings, the international credit ratings agency.

They were so non transparent and complex that neither Wall Street nor the ratings agencies could properly assess them.

The credit rating agencies would probably evaluate the United Nations for credit rating purposes based on various criteria, including

The major ratings agencies are increasingly complaining about the country s lack of a growth strategy and its outsize budget deficits.

The eurozone s immediate challenge is declining fiscal stability in a subset of countries whose credit ratings are falling and debt service costs rising.

This would, among other things, reduce the role of credit rating agencies.

The financial collapse of 2007 2009 was the result of a massive mispricing of assets by private banks and ratings agencies.

If governments that retain strong credit ratings are to spend scarce resources effectively, the most effective approach is to catalyze debt workouts and reductions.

The United Nations goal with respect to the credit rating would be to convince the credit rating agencies to treat the borrowing as quasi sovereign for credit rating purposes.

CDS rates for these countries rose, their credit ratings were lowered and the yield spreads on their government bonds versus Germany widened to an alarming extent.

Imported ratings

Rating agencies have been and should remain an important aspect of modern capital markets. But to make ratings work, the raters need to be rated.

Internal audit ratings

This is why rating agencies opinions are so valuable. Unfortunately, one must wonder to what extent these ratings are distorted by the eurozone countries political power.

The just collapsed credit bubble, fueled by so called special investment vehicles, derivatives, collateralized debt obligations, and phony triple A ratings, was built on the illusions of mathematical modeling.

A network of export credit agencies, efficient payment and credit guarantee arrangements, and local banks supporting trade capacity building institutions are a few options that may be considered.

Bond rating agencies have issued misleading ratings on companies in questionable health. Will we ever again be able to trust a triple A rating issued by, say, Moody s?

But even AAA rated CDOs, which the US ratings agencies had called equivalent in safety to government bonds, are now only worth one third of their nominal value.

Since the international rating agencies gave their assessments (ratings) for each national solvency (the ability to pay public debt) it seemed they held the wand over the Eurozone s future.

Implementation of that approach would essentially result in the utilization of the high credit ratings of some Member States to enhance the overall credit rating of a United Nations bond issue, which would benefit all Member States since it would lower the overall cost of borrowing.

It is enough to remember that in 2008 there were only 12 public companies in the world with AAA credit ratings, but more than 60,000 mostly American triple A structured financial products.

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Table 1 Internal audit ratings

Moreover, credit rating agencies had serious conflicts of interest, because they received fees from the managers of these instruments.

The premia paid by Portugal have actually soared since major ratings agencies, explicitly citing the agreement reached at the EU summit in late March, lowered the country s sovereign debt rating.

The second shaky principle is that, in order to validate these instruments, issuers of CDOs relied on credit rating agencies.

If Europe wants to devise its own rules for credit rating agencies and hedge funds, it should simply go ahead.

Bond investors heavy reliance on credit rating agencies, which tend to be laxer with powerful issuers, has not been fixed.

Ratings that pretend to take into account systemic risk might prove as dangerous as ratings that ignore such risk.