S&P commented: "to enforce a legal duty against a party like S&P, which has no relationship with investors who use rating opinions, yet impose no responsibility on those investors to conduct their own due diligence."

This says it all about how ratings agencies in general think - they have 'no relationship with investors who use rating opinions'. Why do they think investors use their rating opinion? Because investors and financial planners trust that these organisations which hold themselves out to be holier than thou, say they have the expertise and experience to rate product properly, and have access to far more inside information than any investor or financial planner can ever get their hands on.

So S&P are only in it to take money off product suppliers who use them to confirm their product is clean and good to invest in.

If S&P think this way and don't want to be held to the high standard the ratings profession has set, simple, close up shop and do not offer a ratings service. It is about time ratings agencies where held to account for false and misleading ratings.

Do that and their job is done and the investor and planners can have faith in what they were rating. Knowing that bad products will not be miss rated. That's how the market should work.

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