The question is whether rating agencies (and investors) should worry more about these countries' ability to pay their debts.

ECONOMIST: Financial markets and the euro

The best that can be hoped for is that shareholders, rating agencies and the media will increase the pressure for boards to be more transparent, and thereby more answerable to their shareholders.

ECONOMIST: Corporate governance in Germany

These factors include: the European sovereign-debt markets in chaos threatening the viability of the euro, the budget deadlock in the U.S. Congress, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke implying yet more monetary ease, rating agencies threatening a downgrade on U.S. debt and Middle East turmoil.

FORBES: Economic Uncertainty To Lift Gold Prices Next Week -- Survey Participants

Much better would have been less regulation, more competition and a requirement that bond issuers release any information they provide to the rating agencies to the public.

ECONOMIST: Europe misfires in its attack on the rating agencies

For the European banks, Moody's and the other credit rating agencies are seen as grim reapers, going from country to country pronouncing in more-or-less all of them that the banks are less strong than they once were.

BBC: Downgraded UK banks, bonuses and Bank of England support

SEC, he pushed not only for stiffer penalties and more rules but also for more regulation of hedge funds and stock exchanges, as well as the possible regulation of rating agencies.

ECONOMIST: American securities regulation

And it is investigating the payment of fees to rating agencies by issuers of debt, which seems like one more recipe for the conflicts of interest that so bedevil Wall Street.

ECONOMIST: Credit-rating agencies