Time to call a halt to ratings agencies?

What a strange world we live in.

The economics team I work with – Faisal and his backroom wizard, Neil Macdonald, tell me, and you, that today’s UK pre-budget report will stand or fall on the whims of a handful of economists across the world.

Not any old economist but largely those who work for the so-called “ratings agencies”.These are the people who will run their slide rules over Alistair Darling’s measures announced today – it is largely upon their judgements that the fortunes of the pound and the external assessment of the health of the UK will ride.

What perplexes me is why these ratings guys are still in business at all. And they are mainly guys.

These are the very folks, working for “reputable” ratings agencies who accord Lehman Brothers and the massive AIG, RBS, HBOS and the rest, “triple A” ratings shortly before they all went bust.

If we want ratings at all, and I have no idea whether we do or we don’t, it seems to me that these agencies are an entirely unhelpful entity.

The job should be given to an accountable global body which can be held to account for its judgements.

But then this science itself – if science it be – is itself far from precise. It is often psychological, atmospheric, abstract, and subject to circumstances that are almost impossible to predict.

So, is it time to call a halt to the existence of ratings agencies?

Come forth one of you and defend your right to exist on this, er, sensitive day!