Liability For An Uncertain Future?

WALL STREET JOURNAL:

The nation's three dominant credit-ratings providers have made an urgent new request of their clients: Please don't use our credit ratings.

The odd plea is emerging as the first consequence of the financial overhaul that is to be signed into law by President Obama on Wednesday. And it already is creating havoc in the bond markets, parts of which are shutting down in response to the request.

Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings are all refusing to allow their ratings to be used in documentation for new bond sales, each said in statements in recent days. Each says it fears being exposed to new legal liability created by the landmark Dodd-Frank financial reform law.

The new law will make ratings firms liable for the quality of their ratings decisions, effective immediately. The companies say that, until they get a better understanding of their legal exposure, they are refusing to let bond issuers use their ratings.

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Once the bill is signed into law, advice by the services will be considered "expert" if used in formal documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. That definition would make them legally liable for their work, meaning that it will be easier to sue an firm if a bond doesn't perform up to the stated rating.

That is a change from the current law, which considers ratings merely an opinion, protected like any other media such as a newspaper.

Perhaps this is a nice illustration of the unintended consequences of actions taken by government, in this case Congress and the President. I assume Congress and the President did not intend for providers of bond credit-ratings to respond to their legislation by deciding to no longer be providers of bond credit-ratings.

On the other hand, perhaps Congress and the President did intend for this result. Who will provide bond credit-ratings if private businesses won't? I guess government could.

I also wonder why it is thought to be a good idea to say a provider of credit-ratings has liability for actions taken by others who consult these ratings. It seems to me that trying to create such liability amounts to saying the providers of credit-ratings should be liable for an uncertain future. The future is inherently uncertain, and while credit-ratings may provide some information about the risk involved in certain kinds of actions taken today, it seems to me foolish to believe that credit-ratings accurately predict the uncertain risk, much less remove the risk.