The German financial watchdog BaFin could relax its tight investment rules, which are currently based on the grades assigned by rating agencies, German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble has said in an interview. He conceded that legislators were "partly to blame" for giving rating agencies so much power by ruling that certain investments had to have a certain rating. In a letter from only April last year BaFin had specified how strong a rating needed to be for so-called tied assets, and what insurance companies needed to do if that rating were lowered. For the insurance industry the impact could be significant, as many of its sovereign bond investments are not domestic. If the April 2011 circular were rescinded, a hypothetical situation, where insurers might have to sell bonds that were falling in value because of a downgrade, would cease to be a threat.