Leadership Quote by Mike Fitzpatrick

A bland sentence that accidentally reveals a whole ideology: power doesn’t just live in parliaments and boardrooms anymore; it lives in spreadsheets. Fitzpatrick’s line reads like a neutral description of modern finance, but the subtext is sharper: “rating” has become a form of governance. When credit agencies rate “companies, countries and bonds” in one breath, they flatten a democratic nation into the same risk category as a corporate borrower or a tradable instrument. That equivalence is the point, and it’s the quiet provocation.

As a politician, Fitzpatrick is signaling awareness of a post-crisis reality where elected officials often behave like applicants, pitching policy to unelected gatekeepers. A downgrade can raise borrowing costs, spook investors, and force austerity faster than any opposition party can. The intent, then, is less about defining what agencies do and more about reminding the listener who sets the terms of national “credibility.”

The context matters: after 2008, credit rating agencies were widely blamed for rubber-stamping toxic securities, yet they emerged with their authority intact. That contradiction hangs over the quote. “Today” suggests a pivot point - as if this is a new normal we should notice, maybe question, maybe resist. The sentence’s bureaucratic plainness is its rhetorical trick: by sounding harmless, it smuggles in the unsettling claim that markets now audit sovereignty.