B Students

The rating agencies have obviously fallen down on the job, and no one disputes that. However, the most troubling comment you hear over and over are ones like this:

"It's clear to me we can no longer rely solely on the ratings agencies," Sean Dilweg, Wisconsin's insurance commissioner, said following the hearing of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners on Thursday in Maryland.

Dilweg is talking from the perspective of a regulator, not an investor, but NO ONE should ever have been relying solely on a rating agency to measure risks without a more transparent process in place (so you could further rate the rating agency's process). If he were an investor, rather than a regulator, he would be immediately fired for such a comment.