Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-06-15-Speech-2-444"
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"en.20100615.28.2-444"2
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"Mr President, today’s debate in the European Parliament concerns the activities of credit rating agencies and the impact they have on the global and European economy. The European Union and the European Central Bank have issued regulations granting credit rating agencies, such as Moody’s, SnP and Fitch, the right to evaluate not only businesses but also the Member States of the European Union themselves.
When the crisis broke, the same institutions of the European Union recognised the very negative role played by credit rating agencies. Whereas one would have expected the European Commission to limit the role of these agencies, on the contrary, their role was upgraded and formalised in a new regulation in November 2009.
Credit rating agencies had already started to downgrade Greece’s credit rating at the beginning of 2009 and, as a result, it pays double the interest rate it paid before and has entered a vicious circle of depreciation and speculative borrowing. We all know what the final results were. Just yesterday, Moody’s tried yet again to generate a negative climate for the Greek economy and the euro with a blatant speculative intervention, by downgrading the state of the Greek economy by 4 points for no good reason.
Moody’s is one of the three private US companies which the European Union officially recognises for the purpose of rating the Member States’ economies, despite the fact that it is being accused by every economist, politician and institutional player in Europe and the USA of bearing huge responsibility for the recent crisis.
To be precise, it was this agency that was accused by former analysts in the US Congress of being forced by their superiors to give toxic securities a positive rating. It was this agency that is being accused by dozens of businesses of being coerced through ratings into paying fees. It was this agency which, together with the rest of the ‘Holy Trinity’, namely SnP and Fitch, received dozens of complaints from municipalities, regions and states in the United States which were mislead into undertaking investments and lost millions of dollars. It was this agency that is being accused by numerous insurance funds that lost their investments due to erroneous ratings. The insurance fund of the State of Ohio alone lost USD 450 million.
As we know all this, as it is unacceptable for European economies to be rated by self-seeking private US agencies, this job should be undertaken by a public, democratically controlled agency which has no connection to private interests. However, instead of this, Mr Barnier, we see the Commission filibustering even today, with the result that the speculation mafia continue to coerce and direct economic policy at the expense of the workers and citizens of the Member States of the European Union.
I believe that the European Parliament should, at long last, accept its responsibilities, intervene and demand that the European Commission and the Council, having consulted the European Parliament, legislate directly to put an end to this unacceptable situation."@en1
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