From Ross Gittins today:
Sorry, but I’ve put Standard and Poor’s and the two other big American credit rating agencies on a negative watch.
For me, the rating agencies’ involvement in the global financial crisis has destroyed their credibility forever. I can no longer take their solemn pronouncements seriously, nor hear them with the reverence or contrition they imagine themselves entitled to.
Who is going to deny that? It’s true. But that does not mean that the agencies are wrong on Australia. They have, in fact, done a very good of unpacking Australian risk and it is somewhat ironic that Gittins is attacking them for doing their job today based upon past failures. Nor does it explain away what the agencies themselves are pointing to in the Australian economic model. Nor does it account for the fact that despite their very obvious past faults (which I have myself spent many words upon) that they remain very influential in markets.
Much more influential, for instance, than Ross Gittins and his conflicted Domainfax employer.
