2/ This quote from Jim Millstein — the Treasury's chief restructuring officer in the aftermath of the financial crisis — gets at the meat of the issue.

Too often, the ratings agencies are considered as an afterthought, rather than a first-order constraint:

An analysis of case studies found in the Yale Program on Financial Stability’s New Bagehot Project reveals historical precedents for considering the mechanics of ratings agency models when designing responses, and offering greater predictability of potential policy outcomes in crisis communications

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