Bank of France Governor and European Central Bank Governing Council member Christian Noyer lashed out Tuesday at credit rating agencies and the role that they have played in Europe's current fiscal crisis. Noyer said that decisions taken by the credit rating agencies to downgrade the sovereign debt of Eurozone member states such as Greece, Portugal or Spain could have been taken "three, six or even nine months before." "We now fully realize that the comparative advantage of credit rating agencies to assess sovereign risk is equal to zero or is maybe negative," he told a Bank of Korea conference here. "The rating ... (full story)