Community member Don Anderson wrote this response on seeing Annette Heuser’s TED Talk, The 3 agencies with the power to make or break economies:
“The numbers the 3 agencies use are not secret: employment rate, GDP, GNP, debt, green investments, housing prices, and many others. So if anyone really wanted to reform the rating agencies and not look to influence the markets themselves, they would collect the data and create an easy way for anyone to custom build their own formula.
Let the investors decide if employment rate trending is more or less important than green investments vs. GDP.”
— Don Anderson
[ted id=1937]
We’re always on the lookout for sharp critique, thought-provoking questions or interesting insights in response to TED Talks. Post your thoughts alongside any talk; we read them all and will feature one comment on ideas.TED.com each weekday. (Comments are lightly edited for spelling and grammar.)