The other vampires

Pressure mounts on an oligopoly

“LIKE vampires in the dead of the night”, rating agencies “will outlast us all”, said Bill Gross of PIMCO, a fund manager, this month. The ne’er-do-wells that fuelled the mortgage crisis by overrating trillions of dollars of dodgy debt have had a relatively easy time of it recently. But the heat on the oligopoly that dominates the industry—Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s (S&P) and Fitch—is rising.