The feds are finally cracking down on ratings agencies. What
took so long?  July 14, 2013  Feeling Moody yeah yeah yeah.
(Mark Lennihan - AP)  Last week saw the first hearing in the
U.S. government's court case attempting to hold ratings agencies
accountable for their role in the financial crisis. Reforming
the ratings agencies has turned out to be a difficult process.
One would think that such an obvious institutional failure
should prompt quick and definitive reform, not just from the
government but also from the private sector. But that hasn't
happened.  It's worth taking a step back to understand why the
ratings agencies occupy such a crucial place in the financial
landscape. And the real action happened during the creation of
the private-label securitization market in the early 1980s, and
during Alan Greenspan's efforts to let the financial sector
self-regulate its capital ratios in the late 1990s.  The Reagan
administration and Congress worked with Wall Street in the early
1980s to create the legal infr