|
S&P chief to step down amid criticism
[Iran Press TV] The head of the US-based Standard & Poor credit ratings agency, Deven Sharma, is set to step down from his post, less than three weeks after the agency decided to downgrade the United States' rating.Sharma's departure was announced by the S&P's parent company, the McGraw-Hill, in a statement late Monday, AFP reported. Sharma will be replaced by Citibank's chief operating officer Douglas Peterson on September 12. The S&P chief will then assume another role at the agency before leaving the organization altogether at the end of the year. The S&P came under fire by US officials and both Democratic and Republican politicians following its August 5 decision to lower the US rating by one notch from the top triple-A to AA+ for the first time in the history of the ratings. "No matter what some agency may say, we've always been and always will be a triple-A country," US President Barack B.O.Obama said in a speech, dismissing the move by the credit ratings agency. Several other officials from the White House as well as the US Treasury accused the S&P of miscalculating and misreading basic data. Other critics claimed that the S&P had a leading role in causing the market turmoil that led to the 2007 global financial crisis by lowering the triple-A ratings of several mortgage-backed securities. The agency, however, defended its decision regarding the rating of the US and attributed the downgrade to the political gridlock between Obama and the US Congress over raising the debt ceiling. Meanwhile, ...back at the game, the Babe was wondering why the baseball kept getting bigger and bigger. Finally it hit him... the US Justice Department launched an investigation into the practices of the S&P that are claimed to have been behind the 2007 crisis. The investigation was, however, launched before the agency decided to downgrade the US rating. Posted by: Fred 2011-08-25 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=328573 |