Richard Shelby actually said...

I strongly believe that the credit rating agencies played a pivotal role in the collapse of our financial markets.

Widespread overreliance on ratings meant that the effects of poor quality or inadequately updated ratings could ripple through the markets.

Is it possible that ratings for certain instruments, such as more traditional bonds we have talked about, have a greater value as benchmarks...

Unfortunately, the law that we passed in 2006 did not have time to take root before the problems that they were intended to remedy took thei...