European Commission Would Ban Reality If They Could
Written by Brian Garst, Posted in Big Government, Economics & the Economy
Dear Europe,
Banning the messenger won’t make your fiscal policies any less destructive.
Sincerely,
Sane people everywhere
The European Commission is considering a ban on rating agencies publishing their assessments of EU countries in difficulty, the Financial Times Deutschland reports.
The European Union’s commissioner for internal markets and services Michel Barnier has drawn up a draft proposal empowering the new European Securities and Markets Authority to “temporarily prohibit” agencies from publishing their analyses on a country’s solvency, the newspaper said on Thursday.
FT Deutschland said it obtained a copy of the confidential draft.
Barnier is concerned that the publication of a rating at an “inopportune moment” for a country when it is negotiating financial aid from the EU’s bailout fund or the International Monetary Fund could have “negative effects for that country’s financial stability and possible destabilising effects for the global economy.”
Bad policies and runaway government spending have negative effects for a country’s financial stability, not those who report it.
I serve as Vice President of the Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a non-profit think tank dedicated to preserving tax competition and free markets. This site features my personal views, which are not reflective of CF&P.