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Someone didn't learn about the de facto monopoly the SEC (federal gov't) gave the Big Three (Moody's, S&P, Fitch) at the time of the meltdown through its NRSRO status: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationally_recognized_statisti...

The whole banking and financial system at that level has its tendrils wrapped so firmly around the gov't (and vice versa) that a failure there is hardly an indictment of free market principles.

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We're not going to remove all government in one fell swoop. So cases where deregulation causes problems are a strong argument against blindly supporting any and all deregulation. "Deregulation works, you're just not using enough of it" is fallacious IMO, but even if it were correct it would still be irrelevant.

> monopoly the SEC (federal gov't) gave the Big Three (Moody's, S&P, Fitch)

But wasn't part of the problem that there was competition among them? They were handing out favorable(fraudulent) ratings becuase they were trying to poach customers from the others?

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