Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2010-06-15-Speech-2-454"
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"en.20100615.28.2-454"2
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"Mr President, I would just like to remind you that the rating agency Moody downgraded Greece again last night. We all know that the Greek Government has placed enormous pressure on its people in recent weeks, in order to get the crisis under control. We all know that the European Union has put together a package worth EUR 750 billion in order to support the countries that have found themselves in crisis and to help them out of it. Nevertheless, Greece has been downgraded. In fact, the same fate has befallen Spain, as well, because it, too, has been downgraded after adopting a savings package.
Mr Barnier, you have just used the metaphor of a thermometer and said that it must not be broken. I do wonder, however, if a thermometer is really a suitable metaphor for rating agencies. A thermometer obviously does nothing to help improve the condition of the clients, the patient in question – which is something it just cannot do. After all, the thermometer is no drug and is obviously making the patient’s condition even worse. However, it is unacceptable that the countries which are making these efforts should end up being downgraded even further, despite everything they have done.
This raises the question about what these rating agencies actually do. It has already been said that they failed to spot the crisis coming. Therefore, rating agencies did not help predict or diagnose the crisis. Shortly before it collapsed, Lehman Brothers received quite a positive rating. So, with the methods they used, they were not able or did not want to recognise what we had in store. In that respect, this instrument has been a total failure.
Nor have they helped us manage the crisis. I have just given you a newspaper quote on that: ‘Ratings have not helped improve the crisis situation despite all the efforts made and there is concern’ – as the media put it – ‘that we will not be able to see through the packages we have put together’. This means they will pull us down and downgrade us even further.
To conclude, I would like to point out that countries and companies are just not comparable. We have to take a closer look at these ratings. Just doing a bit of window dressing is not enough. What we need is a root-and-branch reform of rating systems."@en1
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