The credit-ratings agencies are many people's prime suspects for the credit crisis. The agencies put their stamp of approval on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of securities tied to mortgages, giving wildly optimistic assessments on debt whose underlying assets soon plunged in value.

A large part of the problem, as Jesse Eisinger detailed in August, is that the Big Three ratings agencies—Moody's, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch—have become a very profitable business, and their ties to the firms whose debt they are rating has not always been clear.

Andrew Cuomo, the New York attorney general, is taking a big step toward shaking up the way the ratings agencies do business, according to several reports today.

The agencies and the attorney general's office are near a settlement that would create greater disclosure over the fees the agencies receive.

Jenny Anderson and Vikas Bajaj of the New York Times say the most important element of the agreement is the change to how the ratings agencies collect fees. The overhaul will "make it harder for investment banks to play the firms against one another to obtain a better rating," they say.

Aaron Lucchetti of the Wall Street Journal notes that, "If a deal is reached, it could change the $5-billion-a-year bond-rating industry as fundamentally as Mr. Cuomo's predecessor Eliot Spitzer did six years ago with his settlement with Wall Street firms over stock-research analysts whose recommendations were compromised by investment-banking ties."

Lynn Turner, a former chief accountant for the Securities and Exchange Commission, told Bloomberg News that the changes would not eliminate the core conflict of interest.

"It aids transparency but it doesn't solve the problem, because the same people—the issuers—are paying for the services, as opposed to the old model where the investors paid for the services," he said. "The old model was a better model."

The old model, selling subscriptions to receive ratings, changed in the 1970s, and companies began paying to be rated.

So this is a business that could change again, but does anyone other than Cuomo have the will to force an overhaul?

The Financial Times last week suggested the creation of "an independent body to commission credit ratings using issuers' money" to resolve the conflict of interest and called on the agencies to adopt new labels after "triple-A" became something of a joke.