Credit Rating Agencies Spend $1.76 Million Lobbying Over Regulations

WASHINGTON — The three major credit rating companies poised to decide whether to downgrade the nation's top-ranked debt standing are at the same time spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to lobby the Obama administration and Congress over the way the government regulates them.

Moody's, Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor's, along with S & P's parent company, McGraw-Hill, have spent a combined $1.76 million since January to lobby Congress and federal agencies, much of it aimed at new regulations. The rules are part of the massive Dodd-Frank overhaul of the financial industry that Congress passed last year, and federal agencies are still midway through rewriting many regulations to conform to the new law.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/01/credit-raters-spend-millions-to-lobby-washington_n_915125.html