Credit Rating Agencies: the EU Targets the Messengers

The Wall Street Journal reported on P. A11 of its October 21, 2011 edition that the European Commission, the executive and administrative arm of the European Union, may ban credit ratings for the sovereign debt of EU member nations that are in bailout negotiations or receiving bailouts. In other words, the credit reporting agencies would not be allowed to issue ratings for EU sovereign debt that investors would really want to have rated.

Information is the lifeblood of the financial markets. Without adequate information, there is no rational way to price a financial instrument. The value of information is well-evidenced by the flurry of recent insider trading cases brought by the SEC and the U.S. Department of Justice. Information can be so valuable that some people will break the law to get it.

Now, the EU proposes to have investors plunk their money down for the debt of dodgy nations without knowing a crucially important piece of information--the credit rating. The credit rating agencies attained their prominent role because the financial markets are too complex, arcane and obscure for even many intelligent and diligent investors to comprehend. While these agencies have hardly covered themselves with glory in recent years, their assessments are held by many to be important (as well as being pertinent to those institutional investors that by law can hold only investments with certain ratings).

Shushing up the credit reporting agencies will have precisely the opposite effect intended by the EC. If deprived of important information, investors will become less confident, and their interest in buying or holding non-rated debt will diminish. The price of non-rated debt will likely plummet, and only vulture funds will profit. Other institutional investors and banks will take more losses than they've already sustained. The ability of the weak members of the EU to access private capital markets will evaporate, and Europe's taxpayers will be presented with more chits to pay.

That the EU wants to muzzle the messengers confirms the profound difficulties of its situation and the diminishing chances of successful resolution. Such blatant acknowledgement when the EU's leadership still claims it can wrassle this debt gator tells you that panic has set in among EU insiders. And where there's panic, bad things are likely to follow.