Credit agency Standard and Poor’s shock announcement Friday afternoon to lower Washington’s credit rating from AAA to AA+ — the first time in history the country has suffered such a downgrade — has rattled markets across the globe. But the decision has also shone a spotlight on the handful of credit analysts with the power to keep governments on a tight leash — individuals whom we know very little about.

S&P, alongside main rival Moody’s and smaller player Fitch, form the so-called “big three” of credit rating agencies. Their teams of experts are charged with judging the balance sheets of governments across the world.

S&P ratings supremo David Beers, the moustachioed, chain-smoking London School of Economics grad, is one such expert. Beers is a Wall Street veteran who recently made the call to downgrade Greece’s credit rating to near-junk status.

He’s also been the focus of comments by journalists at The Guardian who question the wisdom of listening to ratings chiefs like Beers, especially after S&P’s questionable role in the response to the GFC.

As S&P’s head of sovereign credit ratings, Beers is one of the most influential ratings analysts in the world and is seen as the main culprit for the rating cut — although his name features alongside fellow analysts Canadian Nikola Swan and New Yorker John Chambers on the press release issued to announce the ratings cut.

Chambers, 55, is the managing director of the S&P, and has been outed by his hometown newspaper the New York Post as an arts graduate who never studied economics at university.

According to the Post, Chambers studied literature and philosophy at Grinnell College in Iowa, before attaining his masters in English literature at Ivy League Columbia University.

Chambers has also made a number of television appearances to try and sell the reasons behind the S&P announcement, which are mainly based around concerns it has over the ability of the US political class to curtail government debt.

Even less is known about primary analyst Swann, apart from the fact he is based out of S&P’s offices in Toronto.