Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2013-01-15-Speech-2-459-000"
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"en.20130115.29.2-459-000"2
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"Mr President, this is a very complicated subject. Of course the credit rating agencies were not blameless in the subprime crisis, nor in the credit crunch that followed. Lord knows I have castigated them in this Chamber enough, but since 2008 they have improved. They have been honest with the markets about the worthless government debt of Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, if not yet the United Kingdom and the United States.
But are we to crush the rating agencies with regulation? Recall how they rate government debt: you require the rating agencies to get the prior approval of the regulator, ESMA, for their methodologies so that you can manipulate the calculations behind the scenes. Then, in order to control when they publicise their work, you force the rating agencies to disclose to ESMA the dates on which they are going to provide ratings on government debt and to limit those dates to three times a year. This is so that you will not suffer the embarrassment of a downgrade or negative outlook just before a critical auction of government paper. Then, to control where the rating agencies work, you insist that some of the work is done in the jurisdiction of government debt so that you can intimidate the analysts in the same way that the offices of credit rating agencies have been raided by government bodies in places such as Italy. Then, to control who does the work, you insist not only on the rotation of credit rating agencies themselves, but also on the individual analysts who work and have experience on particular debt and the assets that back them. Finally, to control the purpose of providing credit ratings, you seek to remove references to and reliance upon ratings, both within the workings of government and in private investment funds.
Much of this is actually an attack on free speech. The world is watching you, frankly. Can you be trusted? I believe that this is a regulation to castrate the rating agencies and turn them into government eunuchs to vainly protect the chastity of the euro, a currency born out of wedlock and without a dowry. I fear that we will find ourselves back exactly in the position where we started."@en1
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