Taking aim at some of the key causes of the financial crisis, the SEC
approved rules on Wednesday that would require issuers of asset-backed securities — complex investments based on mortgages, auto loans or other types of debt — to disclose more information about the underlying loans. The rules are meant to help investors better judge the quality of such securities.
At the same time, the S.E.C. tightened controls on credit rating agencies, whose overly optimistic ratings helped inflate the housing bubble in the years before the crisis.
This from the New York Times, which has the whole story here.
