提议使信用评级机构集体承担不准确的责任。

众议院金融服务小组委员会主席保罗·坎乔斯基（Paul Kanjorski）提出了一项新法案，该草案提议使信贷评级机构集体对不准确性负责。当他们未能正确警告投资者有关在市场下跌之前与次级抵押证券相关的风险时，这些机构收到了很多热量。bob200体育

当前系统的一个问题是发行证券的公司是支付信贷评级机构对证券进行评级的公司。bob200体育Kanjorski的法案草案使投资者追求lawsuits against credit rating agenciesthat recklessly or intentionally did not examine key data to determine the ratings. He says that collective liability could compel the ratings agencies to provide reliable, quality ratings while providing the proper incentive for them to monitor each other.

Critics of the plan, including Republicans and industry executives, warned that collective liability could result in a slew of expensive complaints while decreasing competition even more in an industry that Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Investors Services, and Standard and Poor’s already dominate.

Kanjorski说，他的提议是一个“起点”，随着国会对信用评级机构行业的监视，奥巴马政府呼吁进行严格的政府监督。

Credit ratings agencies are charged with issuing the creditworthiness ratings of securities and public companies. The ratings can impact a company’s ability to borrow or raise funds and determine how much mutual funds, banks, local governments, and state pension funds will pay for securities.

When home-loan delinquencies went up last year, the investments’ value dropped and the credit ratings agencies were forced to downgrade the ratings they gave to thousands of securities. Large banks and investment firms sustained hundreds of billions of dollars in losses because of the downgrades.

Meantime, two former Moody’s employees, former analyst Eric Kolchinsky and former senior vice president for compliance Scott McCleskey, are accusing Moody’s ofmisconduct, including engaging in conflicts of interest, knowingly inflating ratings, and failing to implement “meaningful surveillance of municipal securities” despite the credit ratings agency’s statements to the contrary. Moody’s acknowledges misjudging the magnitude of the subprime mortgage collapse but says the allegations are “unsupported.”

最近，SEC提出的规则将阻止利益冲突，并允许对信用评级机构提高透明度。

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Related Web Resources:
Lawmaker seeks group liability for rating agencies, Business Week, September 30, 2009
信用评级机构对次级信贷市场的作用和影响, SEC.gov, September 26, 2009
House Committee on Financial Services