I need the following question answered with original material and 5 paragraphs in length.

Bond rating agencies have invested significant sums of money in an effort to determine which quantitative and nonquantitative factors best predict bond defaults. Furthermore, some of the raters invest time and money to meet privately with corporate personnel to get nonpublic information that is used in assigning the issue's bond rating. To recoup those costs, some bond rating agencies have tied their ratings to the purchase of additional services. Do you believe that this is an acceptable practice? Defend your position.

The next three questions refer to this news item:

Satellite-radio firm Sirius XM posted earnings and showed some signs of improvement over last year. The company expanded its subscriber base following recession driven subscriber losses in the past year. Revenues were up to a record $629.6 million and losses narrowed to $181.9 million from $217 million the previous year.

Investors perceived the news to be positive and pushed stock prices up by about five percent to 64 cents a share. Analysts believe the company's growth will slow significantly in the future but for the moment is driven by the sales of new cars that come equipped with satellite-radio service. The general consensus is that Sirius will have to become more efficient and slash costs to become profitable. In the meantime, the company continues to pursue subscribers via channels like the new Apple iPhone application released last week.

Source: Kharif, Olga, "Sirius XM: The Good and Bad Earnings News," Business Week, BusinessWeek.com, http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/nov2009/tc2009115_002716.htm, posted 11/05/2009.