锱铢必较 雪上加霜
在经济危机中，评级机构所作出的决定反而对经济形势产生消极作用。
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triple-A
Robert Pollin
University of Massachusetts Amherst
01:07教授口误请忽略
主持：shenyubin
校对：cryforwhat
翻译&注解：cjsfight
答疑：赤_月http://t1.g.hjfile.cn/listen/201208/201208190813077151276.mp3Now there's a long list of candidates for blame in the disaster that hit the American housing market, I won't even attempt to name them all. But one group that crops up quite often is the credit rating agencies. Their alleged role was giving their triple-A seal of approval to financial securities that bundled up home loans, mortgages which were then traded in the markets. When the mortgage default started to climb, those financial assets lost value and the credit rating suddenly looked very hard to defend. Now the agencies are sometimes accused of overcorrecting for past errors when they rate the debts of governments in Europe and elsewhere of being too quick to downgrade them. One agency has stripped the United States of its triple-A rating and even Germany is under review. It all serves to raise some fundamental questions about the ratings agencies. I discuss them with Professor Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. First, does he think they've aggravated the European crisis?
"I do. Because the credit rating agencies are playing the role of evaluating the debt of governments and suggesting that governments are heavily over-indebted and the situation is highly risky and that then drives up the interest rates that the governments have to pay in order to get credit. The upshot is that the credit rating agencies are helping to reinforce the austerity agenda in Europe and that is only making conditions worse in my view."目前冲击美国房市的这场灾难已经能找到一系列人对此负责，我不求将他们一一列举。但有一个突然频繁出现的组织不得不提，那就是评级机构。他们的职责是给予他们所认可的金融证券、房屋贷款和在市场上交易的抵押品三A评级。一旦贷款违约处于上升风险，那些金融资产就会贬值，评级也就难以维持。现在评级机构时而会因过度修正其以前的过失而被谴责，比如说他们曾在评估欧洲或其他地方政府债务时频繁下调他们的信用等级。一个评级机构曾剥夺了美国的三A评级，甚至令德国陷入观察期。这都引发了我们对于评级机构的一些基本的质疑。我和来自麻州大学艾默斯特分校的罗伯特·波林就此进行交流。首先，他是否认为这些评级机构加速了欧洲危机的进程呢？
“我是这样认为的。评级机构是对政府债务进行评估，并暗示政府所处的过度负债状态十分危急，政府为了保级求信誉就不得不提高他们所要支付的利息率。结果便是评级机构反而加重了欧洲紧缩计划，这在我看来只会令事情变得更糟。”
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