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A credit rating agency (CRA, also called a ratings service) is a company that assigns credit ratings, which rate a debtor's ability to pay back debt by making timely interest payments and the likelihood of default. An agency may rate the creditworthiness of issuers of debt obligations, of debt instruments,〔A debt instrument is any type of documented financial obligation. A debt instrument makes it possible to transfer the ownership of debt so it can be traded. (source: (wisegeek.com ))〕 and in some cases, of the servicers of the underlying debt,〔For example, in the US, a state government which shares the credit responsibility for a Municipal bond issued by a municipal government entities but under the control of that state government entity. (source:(Campbell R. Harvey's ) Hypertextual Finance Glossary)〕 but not of individual consumers. The debt instruments rated by CRAs include government bonds, corporate bonds, CDs, municipal bonds, preferred stock, and collateralized securities, such as mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations. The issuers of the obligations or securities may be companies, special purpose entities, state or local governments, non-profit organizations, or sovereign nations.〔 A credit rating facilitates the trading of securities on a secondary market. It affects the interest rate that a security pays out, with higher ratings leading to lower interest rates. Individual consumers are rated for creditworthiness not by credit rating agencies but by credit bureaus (also called consumer reporting agencies or credit reference agencies), which issue credit scores. The value of credit ratings for securities has been widely questioned. Hundreds of billions of securities that were given the agencies' highest ratings were downgraded to junk during the financial crisis of 2007–08.〔$300 billion collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) issued in 2005-2007 (over half of the CDOs by value during time period) that rating agencies gave their highest "triple-A" rating to, were written-down to "junk" by the end of 2009. (source: )〕〔McLean, Bethany and Joe Nocera. ''All the Devils Are Here: The Hidden History of the Financial Crisis'', Portfolio, Penguin, 2010 (p.111)〕 Rating downgrades during the European sovereign debt crisis of 2010–12 were blamed by EU officials for accelerating the crisis.〔 Credit rating is a highly concentrated industry, with the two largest CRAs—Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's (S&P)—controlling 80% of the global market share, and the "Big Three" credit rating agencies—Moody's, S&P, and Fitch Ratings—controlling approximately 95% of the ratings business.〔 ==History== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Credit rating agency」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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