When early this morning I switched to the BBC News Channel I jumped for joy: It was announced that the US government plans to sue the ratings agency Standard & Poor over its rating of mortgage bonds at the heart of the 2008 financial crisis!
It must be two years now since I first questioned the legitimacy of ratings agencies: Standard & Poor’s, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings lead the exclusive club of a handful of such agencies and are the names most commonly heard when especially “down”-ratings of countries (and corporates) have been announced with such monotonous regularity during the past years.
What people do not understand is that these agencies are not government agencies or organizations brought about through international agreements and representation. These are all privately-owned organizations which - and I will bet my bottom dollar – given the opportunity, can and will use their influence to make money out of destabilizing national economies.
Likewise the US Feds (the Federal Reserve System) are privately owned! In the same vein, it is incredible that non-governmental institutions in the UK could have been responsible for fixing the libor rate.
It may be quite a revealing moment for you if you could spend a little time on inquiring into the board membership and the ownership of these different organizations that so negatively impact the quality of life of the man in the street and our ability to make a decent living. I have - and it has opened my mind to a number of unpleasant truths.
Remember that there is no such thing as conspiracies. There are only loopholes, which given a chance and the course of human nature, that people will take and get away with if Joe Soap and friends don’t start putting the screw on these privately-owned businesses.
It is time that we, the people, start taking back our power and start forcing politicians to be responsible for the decisions that govern our quality of life and our future. Our future must be wrestled back from the realm of boardrooms and it must be placed again where it rightfully belongs: Within the debate of democratically elected parliaments!
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