Rhetoric and the Regulation of the Global Financial Markets in a Time of Crisis: The Regulation of Credit Ratings

Abstract

The market for credit ratings is a transnational market dominated by a small number of credit rating agencies (CRAs). The article examines how CRAs have used market protection rhetoric and harmonization rhetoric during the crisis in the financial markets. As criticisms of pre-crisis financial regulation proliferated one might have expected CRAs to be less forceful in their resort to market protection rhetoric. CRAs’ lobbying strategies have evolved as discussions about the broader future of financial regulation have evolved, and they have conceded a greater role for regulation in 2009 than they had before the crisis, but they continue to emphasize, with some success, that as a global business they should not be subjected to different rules in different jurisdictions, and to insist that the core of their methodological approaches to rating should be unregulated.

Keywords: credit rating agencies, multilevel regulation

JEL Classification: G18, K22