RT Article
T1 The Ethics of Credit Rating Agencies: What Happened and the Way Forward
JF Journal of business ethics
VO 111
IS 4
SP 477
OP 490
A1 Scalet, Steven
A1 Kelly, Thomas F.
A2 Kelly, Thomas F.
LA English
YR 2012
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1785646370
AB During the short span of a few months in 2008, 14 trillion dollars of highly rated bonds fell into junk status, surprising the global financial system and accelerating an economic decline. The result was the worst fracture of the US financial system since the Great Depression. Credit rating agencies (CRAs) in particular have come under intense scrutiny as a result of this latest disaster, both domestically and internationally, including many congressional inquiries and government investigations. Most of the public and scholarly discussions about CRAs focus on reforming the financial system so that the crisis of the magnitude of the 2008 disaster will not happen again. An important overtone of industry criticisms includes a sense of ethical impropriety on the part of CRAs and ethical uncertainty about the institutional mechanisms that are currently in place. Rarely, however, are the ethics of the industry the explicit subject of analysis. In this article, we discuss the lessons from the policy debates and recent legislation to develop an account of the ethics of the CRA industry.
K1 Corporate Responsibility
K1 Business Ethics
K1 Finance ethics
K1 2008 Subprime meltdown
K1 Rating bonds
K1 Securities
K1 SEC
K1 credit crisis
K1 Finance
K1 Ethics
K1 Credit rating agencies (CRAs)
DO 10.1007/s10551-012-1212-y