And my optimism that new more-accurate ratings agencies will appear to compete with profitably-wrong ratings agencies went out the window with the CDO mess.

Let them use whatever the hell they want. Either they'll be right (and have a useful credit rating score) or they'll be wrong, and lose custom to other banks. That's how a market works.

You have no God-given right to credit. You have access to as much credit as someone wants to offer you, and they compete each other such that the rates you get offered reflect the market-thinking of normal profit (as compared to super-normal profits) + default costs.

But you do have a reasonable expectation as a citizen of a country that your common tax/output funded currency will be available to you on the same terms it is to others. Otherwise, why would you contribute to/use it?

This is already not the case in most places as all lending is done through predatory monopolies with privileged access to the central bank, and a central bank financed via government subsidy but outside of government (the people's) control.

Already we've got a toxic system that's not of much use to the people who pay for it.

I think US has the most competitive credit card enviroment.

It becomes considerably less great for people who use those cards as anything other than a lower-risk debit card.