Opinion | Berating the Raters (Published 2010)

Let’s hear it for the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. Its work on the financial crisis is increasingly looking like the 21st-century version of the Pecora hearings, which helped usher in New Deal-era financial regulation. In the past few days scandalous Wall Street e-mail messages released by the subcommittee have made headlines. That’s the good news. The bad news is that most o

[fujikumo]

上院の小委員会で暴露されたEメール、ゴールドマンサックスの方ではなく、格付け会社の従業員が出していたメールの方に注目。格付け会社が金融機関と“discuss adjusting criteria”のための会議を開いていたこと。

[Scatterbrain]

bestowed AAA ratings on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of dubious assets, nearly all of which have since turned out to be toxic waste. And no, that’s not hyperbole: of AAA-rated subprime-mortgage-backed securities issued in 2006, 93 percent — 93 percent! — have now been downgraded to