The Eurozone, like the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, in the United States, is toying with the idea of establishing their own rating agency. Spiegl reported some days ago that Eurozone Ministers were concerned that Greece depended upon the rating of a single agency.
The first objection to this obtuse proposal is one of conflict of interest. Why would buyers of debt take heed of a rating agency controlled by the debtors? Well, they wouldn't...
And their objection to a single rating agency is less than it appears. There was competition, but the other two agencies had already junked Greece's ratings:
Under existing rules, the ECB can only accept euro-zone sovereign bonds as collateral when lending money if at least one of the three main rating agencies gives the country issuing the securities an A- rating or better. Moody's is now the only main rating agency that still gives Greece an A2 rating; Standard & Poor's and Fitch have already lowered their grades to the BBB level....
"It is a very unfortunate situation that a single agency has got so much influence over whether the ECB accepts a security as collateral or not," Deutsche Bank chief economist Thomas Mayer told Handelsblatt.
Moody's have, inadvertently, gained a monopoly through the rules set by the European Central Bank, and they don't like it. So, they would rig the rules and allow debt ratings to drift from their true price through a pet rating agency. They don't distrust monopoly, just one they don't run.