So are you saying that the US shouldn't have been AAA? Or that S&P should be regulated so that its hands are tied behind its back? While the {S&P, Moodys, Fit

So are you saying that the US shouldn't have been AAA? Or that S&P should be regulated so that its hands are tied behind its back? While the {S&P, Moodys, Fitch} sub-prime department obviously got completely ahead of itself modelling-wise, the corporate and sovereign departments have a lot of credibility : partly because they haven't been trying to assign values to 'a whole new way of doing things (this time it's different, etc)'.