NEW: Do you want to work for free? Well, neither do credit ratings firms. Which is why a postcrisis SEC rule that enabled them to publish unsolicited credit ratings for free has yielded few, if any, results. Bond issuers easily beat that price point. wsj.com/articles/sec-f…
The SEC declined to answer questions about the program, but said in response to a #FOIA request that after a “thorough search” of its records, it “did not locate or identify” any examples of unsolicited ratings published by ratings firms under the rule.
Credit ratings firms told me they either haven't or don't plan to issue any unsolicited ratings under the rule, formally known as 17g-5.
The SEC implemented the rule in 2010 with the goal of limiting issuers' ability to exert their influence over ratings firms. The thinking was that "any inappropriate credit rating could be exposed to the market through the unsolicited credit ratings."
Inappropriate rating were a contributor to the 2008 financial crisis. Researchers at the Philadelphia Fed recently completed a tally of losses from overly optimistic ratings on subprime mortgage-backed bonds issued before the the crisis: $410 billion papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cf… 
It turned out that manufacturing AAA rated debt from other subprime securities in this fashion was a (very) bad idea:
To avoid a repeat of that, former Sen. @alfranken tried to get the SEC to pursue a different solution: creating an oversight board that would assign firms to rate bonds, thus preventing issuers from being able to solicit their own ratings blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/05/…
The SEC didn't implement that plan. @alfranken thinks it would have fared better than the SEC's unsolicited ratings rule.
Now, the SEC is facing bipartisan ire for its failure to overhaul the ratings industry. In recent weeks, both Massachusetts Democrat @SenWarren and Mississippi Republican @SenatorWicker have expressed frustration at SEC. warren.senate.gov/oversight/lett…
A bond-investor advisory committee at the SEC is also looking into credit ratings. They also found little evidence to suggest the SEC's unsolicited ratings program worked. sec.gov/spotlight/fixe…
For more of the back-story on all this, read the story @GunjanJS and I did in August on ratings inflation: wsj.com/articles/infla…
