Rating agencies - Reform can wait - we're busy right now

One of the main beneficiaries of governments' push for kamikaze interest rates and more credit in order to add to the mountain of toxic debt already built, are the rating agencies.
Far from being bypassed in the current new debt issuance bonanza, the rating agencies, who manufactured the structured finance ratings that propelled the credit crisis, are mainstream in the ratings of the various government-backed issues of new bank debt.
Instead of punishing the rating agencies for their past greed-induced blindness and insisting on fundamental changes to their business models, the desperation to create more money has led to the political expediency of doing nothing to change the agencies' flawed methods, for fear of delaying the issuance of the supposedly much-needed debt.
As for quantitative easing, will governments be buying unrated debt or will they too be demanding the illusory comfort of a rating agency prognostication?
Warren Buffet's fund which continues to hold over 20% of Moody's (MCO) seems to have correctly backed the embedded rating agencies over the interest-ridden, prevaricating politicians in the various public spectacles and recriminatory showdowns.
However, all it needs is for the SEC which, through its own laziness, started the process of hard-wiring the rating agencies into bondmarket regulation in 1975, to cut some of the wires. One example that springs to mind is that bonds issued by banks which carry full-faith government guarantees could be automatically designated by the SEC as risk-free and therefore not requiring of a rating. OK, so the rating agencies would then potentially seek to invoice the US government more for its sovereign rating but normally the agencies only charge against the traded liability - not against the contingent liability.
But this is not going to happen.
Rating agencies will not have to change; regulators cannot think of an alternative and who knows, the next quantitative black box models might get it right, so why bother looking for an alternative.
Meanwhile, investment managers are either mandated to follow ratings or potentiallly expose themself to legal challenge from their investors if they lose money on unrated transacations - how can that Catch 22 change?
So it's business as usual for the agencies with the added bonus of Basel 2 work to support their revenues and cement their position in the regulatory framework.