We've deleted Promise No. 29 on financial regulation

Posted by Angie Drobnic Holan :: Published on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 07:16 p.m.

We've decided to delete a promise on financial regulation.

Given this week's economic news, we decided to check Obama's promise to investigate potential conflicts of interest between credit ratings agencies and financial institutions. The promise was No. 29, "Investigate potential conflict of interest between credit ratings agencies and financial institutions." Obama's campaign literature said that "Barack Obama supports an immediate investigation into the ratings agencies and their relationships to securities' issuers."

Credit rating agencies evaluate the soundness of bonds and other financial products. Before the financial crisis, they rated some products highly that ended up being poor investments.

But when we dug deeper into the promise, we realized that Obama made the promise back in 2007, and an investigation was conducted in 2008 -- before he took office. So we're removing this promise from our promises database.

For those keeping track at home, this is the third promise we've deleted from our database of more than 500 promises. We deleted another promise on capital gains taxes that had been enacted before Obama took office, and we deleted a promise about fair pay that was a duplicate of another promise. We've also added eight promises that we missed. So the official tally of promises in the database is 515 promises.

If you're interested in Obama's record on financial regulation, we are still tracking Promise No. 422, Create new financial regulations. It's rated In the Works, and we've also designated it one of PolitiFact's Top Promises.

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Sources

"Barack Obama's Economic Agenda"

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Summary Report of Issues Identified in the Commission Staff’s Examinations of Select Credit Rating Agencies, July 2008