Croatan Institute and Allies Outline Credit Rating Overhaul to U.S. Financial Regulator

July 26, 2023

Senior Fellow Bill Harrington and advocacy colleagues from Americans for Financial Reform, CreditSpectrum, the Credit Rating Initiative, and the International Institute of Law and Finance advised senior staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on how best to enact meaningful accountability for regulated credit rating companies. Harrington and his collaborators aim to boost the quality of credit ratings that companies such as Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Investors Service, and S&P Global Ratings assign to asset-backed securities, derivative contracts, and other complex financial instruments that were root causes of the 2008 financial crisis. The advocacy group detailed credit rating overhaul in a petition for SEC rulemaking dated January 13, 2023. For more on Harrington’s work to instill accountability into the U.S. and global financial systems, please see “Injecting Accountability into the U.S. and Global Financial Systems.