Markets: The Credit Rating Agencies

This paper will explore how the financial regulatory structure propelled three credit rating agencies -- Moody's, Standard & Poor's (S&P), and Fitch -- to the center of the U.S. bond markets -- and thereby virtually guaranteed that when these rating agencies did make mistakes, these mistakes would have serious consequences for the financial sector. We begin by looking at some relevant history of the industry, including the series of events that led financial regulators to outsource their judgments to the credit rating agencies (by requiring financial institutions to use the specific bond creditworthiness information that was provided by the major rating agencies) and when the credit rating agencies shifted their business model from "investor pays" to "issuer pays." We then look at how the credit rating industry evolved and how its interaction with regulatory authorities served as a barrier to entry. We then show how these ingredients combined to contribute to the subprime mortgage debacle and associated financial crisis. Finally, we consider two possible routes for public policy with respect to the credit rating industry: One route would tighten the regulation of the rating agencies, while the other route would reduce the required centrality of the rating agencies and thereby open up the bond information process in a way that has not been possible since the 1930s.

Assessment of the temporal change in groundwater quality when stored at different temperatures in household conditions, in the equatorial region of Central Africa

The study carried out aimed at assessing the impact of groundwater storage temperature at household conditions on the temporal evolution of electrical conductivity and the future of heterotrophic aerobe bacteria (HAB). The storage duration was 7 days and the considered temperatures were 3, 10, 18 and 25°C. The electrical conductivity during storage reached 829 µS/cm at 3 - 18°C and 850 µS/cm at 25°C. The maximum HAB abundance was 9 x 103 cfu/ml at 3°C, 41 x 103 cfu/ml at 10°C, 44 x 103 cfu/ml at 18°C and 93 x 103 cfu/ml at 25°C. At the 3rd and 7th days storage at 3°C, changes in bacterial abundances values were significantly in the same direction as those of electrical conductivity (P < 0.05). The highest cell apparent growth rate at the 3rd day storage was 0.249 d-1 at 3°C, 0.559 d-1 at 10°C, 0.924 d-1 at 18°C and 1.233 d-1 at 25°C. However, at the 7th day storage, it was 0.362 d-1 at 3°C, 0.497 d-1 at 10°C, 0.690 d-1 at 18°C and 0.672 d-1 at 25°C. At the 3rd day storage, a decrease in cell abundance was noted in 90% of samples at 3°C and the cell apparent inhibitory rate varied from 0.012 to 0.989 d-1. The storage of groundwater in households’ conditions for a long period would alter its bacteriological quality.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe