January 13, 2015
The NYT reported on the likelihood of a settlement between Standard and Poors and the Justice Department over accusations that S.&P. had effectively sold investment grade ratings to banks issuing mortgage backed securities (MBS) during the housing bubble years. The claim is that S.&P. knowingly gave ratings to MBS that they did not deserve because rating these issues was a major source of revenue to the company and it did not want to risk the business by giving out honest ratings.
This is a good time to mention the Franken Amendment to the Dodd-Frank bill which would have eliminated the incentive for the rating agencies to exaggerate the quality of MBS by taking the hiring decision away from the banks. Instead of directly hiring a rating agency, an issuer of MBS would contact the SEC, which would then determine which rating agency to assign to the job. While the amendment passed with overwhelming and bi-partisan support in the Senate, it was stripped out in the conference committee, apparently at the request of the Obama administration.
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) then studied the issue for three years and decided that it was not up to the task of picking rating agencies after being inundated with comments from the industry. The gist of these comments was that the SEC might send over an agency that was not competent to rate the bond issue in question. This begs the obvious question of why would any bank be marketing a bond, the quality of which a professional auditor at one of the accredited rating agencies could not accurately assess? Nonetheless the amendment was killed and the pre-crisis system was preserved intact.
And, as economic theory would predict, there is evidence that the rating agencies are again lowering their standards to gain business.
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