Financial Industry reliance on ratings of Securitized mortgages - why not replace ratings with data?

All this reliance on ratings agencies' rather ball-park estimates of risk (Securitized debt basically falls into one of 6 categories: AAA,AA,A,BBB,BB,B) could be replaced with detailed hard data and much better statistical estimates of risk based on that data. Wallmart and all other large retailers gather data on every product they sell and update inventory in real time. This could be done for mortgage loans (which do involve a bit more money than the purchase of, say, a toothbrush). Make it a law that all mortgage originators enter all pertinate data on the loan into a database: income, current payments on other debts etc.

Individuals in the Financial sector have said they had to develop elaborate formulas to come up with valuations for bundled mortgages bacause there was no way to evaluate all those mortgages!. Nonsense! Complete data on every one of the mortgages in a bundled CDO could be examined by computer in the time it takes to depress a key on your keyboard. You don't need these formulas nobody understands. Perform statistical analyses of the entire lot of mortgages. The right software would kick out statistical analyses of each tranche. Formulas! what bullshit!

AND... Along with the financial data enterred into the database on each mortgage, would be of course an identification of the individual selling and the individual approving each loan. With these data, it would be pretty easy to see, over time, if there were individuals selling and approving loans in an irresponsible manner. Good data to have!

This would bring actual detailed data and considerably more precision to estimating the risk and therefor the value of these securitized mortgages. Of course, mortgage brokers and others who like to gamble on securitized debt wouldn't like this just because it does take a good deal of the uncertainty out of putting a value on these mortgages. .... Less opportunity to take advantage of an investor who doesn't have the expertise of a specialist who trades in these things all the time. ... takes all the "fun" out of it!

Why not remove some of the uncertainty of evaluating the risk and value of securitized mortgages ....and keep track of the people making the loans. Seems like an eminently practical and rational approach to me.

It'll never happen!