Word: bettering
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...December, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which oversees the agencies, passed new rules to inject more transparency into the ratings process and to better mediate conflicts of interest. But those rules were severely watered down from what the SEC had proposed the summer before and subsequently dismissed by people who had been hoping for genuine reform. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...reopening the debate. On Wednesday it will host a roundtable discussion with the heads of both major and minor credit-rating agencies as well as investors and academic experts. "We're inviting a lot of the people who have had some very interesting ideas about what would be a better model," SEC chairwoman Mary Schapiro told Congress in March. "There have been some very thoughtful proposals put out there...
Thousands have since been downgraded. "We need to consider alternatives to the issuer-pay model," SEC commissioner Elisse Walter said in a speech in March. One idea: level the playing field so that new competitors, like smaller agencies that charge investors instead of issuers, can better compete. Another option: a tax on investors, issuers or even the public at large in order to create a central pool of money with which to buy ratings to be made public. (See the best business deals...
...indictment against Blagojevich, his older brother Robert and four associates, which includes charges of racketeering conspiracy, extortion conspiracy, attempted extortion, making false statements and wire fraud, effectively paints the impeached ex-governor as the head of a vast criminal enterprise. "With RICO, these defendants are seen as no better than a street gang, common thugs," says Ronald Smith, a former prosecutor and current law professor at John Marshall Law School who has taught federal criminal law for 15 years...
...Nick Baines, the Bishop of Croydon, says such notation makes little difference. "Sticking John Hunt's note in the register is not 'de-anything,'" he wrote on his blog. "It is simply a note in a register that has no effect whatsoever other than to make him feel better that he has been heard." And, officials at the Church of England say, allowing such notation is not the Church's official policy because true renunciation can only take place between an individual...