The European Commission on Tuesday (15 November) is to unveil proposals to clamp down on the credit-ratings industry, seen as one of the key villains in the eurozone debt crisis melodrama.Nice to see such great value being placed on free speech in the EU. If it might harm the project, even if it's an honest opinion, you can't say it. End of. As was said at von Mises, this is simply shooting the messenger. In fact it smacks of such desperation that I'm surprised that the messenger isn't already saying, 'Look, fuck that, I'm not going anywhere near the place and I'd advise anyone else with a vestige of sanity not to go anywhere near it either.'
Internal market commissioner Michel Barnier is to propose a series of measures including a 'blackout' in the rating of troubled states in an attempt to limit the ratcheting up of market instability the EU executive accuses the sector of being responsible for when it has delivered downgrades to the credit ratings of countries.
The draft law would allow the EU to temporarily ban companies such as Standard & Poor’s, Fitch and Moody’s from issuing ratings changes if regulators assess that such moves would exacerbate market volatility.
'Kinell.