Absent a willingness on the part of The Fed to "decree that the institutions they supervise are not required to use agency credit ratings to risk-weight their assets for regulatory capital purposes" Congress could pass legislation forbidding all reference to credit rating agency results for five years from the date of determination by the FTC that the ratings given by a given agency were not based on appropriate risk analysis and/or were influenced by market share considerations. Among other liabilities Moody's, S & P and Fitch have arguably been guilty of false advertising.

Perhaps also those companies should be required to put a black box warning at the top of each rating report:

Caution! Reliance on the statements in this product can be harmful to your portfolio and net worth.

"It is not necessary to have hope in order to persevere."