Has your bank used your money to buy worthless European bonds?

You must not be told say European regulators. Apparently you have to wait for it to go bust before you find out

"A House of Lords Committee has lambasted European plans to ban credit ratings of sovereign debt as a "wholly impractical" idea that "smacks of censorship".

The Lords European Union Economic Affairs Committee said politicians were wrong to extend the criticism of credit rating agencies before 2008 to the European debt problems.

The ratings downgrades, some of which have caused turmoil in the markets, have been accurate warnings, not mistakes, said the Lords. The Committee, which conducted a four-month investigation into the role of the agencies in Europe, found that they did "not challenge rigorously enough the assumptions on which they based their assessments of Member States' sovereign debt".

But, in its report published on Wednesday, the Committee said: "Commissioner [Michel] Barnier's proposal that sovereign debt ratings be suspended for countries in international financial assistance programmes is wholly impractical and smacks of censorship."

Lord Harrison, chairman of the Committee, added that the agencies' "recent downgrades merely reflect the seriousness of the problems facing countries such as Ireland, Portugal and Greece".

Source

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).