Are Ratings Companies Creating The Next Recession?

Without a doubt the work and social culture in European countries differ vastly than ours.

Jobs for life (Greece), short work weeks, extreme examples of paid sick leave from work (Italy) and more abound that have undoubtedly aided in the mess they are in

The creation of a unifying currency, with limited bounds on member financial budgets that reflect the true cost of the currency has created a monster that is certainly wrecking economies across the European Union.

But are the real villlians the ratings companies, Standard & Poor’s, Fitch Ratings, Moodys,and others?

There seems to be a great amount of power concentrated in small groups that actually control the interest rates that sovereign countries pay on their debt. And if any one of these ratings companies doesn’t like what they see and deduce (generally using economic investigation methods not open to question) that they country has too much debt they can lower the ratings automatically allowing the financial markets to follow in line and begin the upward bids in interest payable on sovereign debt.

And these people, with all this power, are unelected! Yet it seems to me that they hold a country’s future economic well being in their hands!

Am I missing something or do I see a massive conspiracy to drive money into the hands of a few from the citizenry of the world?