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It's not individual bribery, it's systemic conflict of interest.
How many of them rated CDO risk "AAA" until summer 2007?
It's not individual bribery, it's systemic conflict of interest.
How many of them rated Bear Sterns and Lehman AA or better till the exact days of their collapse?
Naaa, this is a realistic assessment that the Republicans and Democrats are so far apart on negotiating a long term solution to solving the debt problem that it can't possibly be resolved until another election cycle goes by and one side or the other gains the upper hand...so this is an acknowledgement that they will kick the can down the road until at least 2013.
A realistic long term solution to the debt problem is going to require accepting the Holy Economic Trinity of Tax Revenue increases, Military spending cuts, and cuts in SS, Medicare and Medicaid.
All of the above...and based on the performance of the current two party system they will never get there...
Questions for S&P on Its Potential Downgrade of U.S. Debt
"The last time S&P was in the headlines it was for giving investment grade ratings to hundreds of billions of dollars of securities that were backed by subprime and ALT-A mortgages.
Serious people should ask what S&P has done to improve its ratings systems. Have they changed their procedures? Did the S&P analysts who gave AAA or other investment grade ratings to toxic junk get fired or at least get demoted? If not, should we assume that S&P used the same care in assigning a negative outlook to U.S. government debt as it did in assigning investment grade ratings to toxic assets?
Of course it was not just bad mortgage debt that stumped the S&P gang. It gave top quality investment grade ratings to Lehman until just before it imploded in the largest bankruptcy in history. The same was true of AIG, which would have faced a similar fate without a government rescue. Bear Stearns also had a top rating until the very end, as did Enron. In short, S&P has a quite a track record in missing the boat when it comes to assessing creditworthiness."
The ratings agencies were paid by Wall St to LIE about ratings, so Wall St could sell toxic crap as AAA.
Apparently no one is paying attention to S&P.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_V...year_s%26p.jpg
I think most everybody here acknowledges this as the necessary solution, save for a few iconoclasts at either end of the spectrum.
We should start a pool about how long the two parties will play politics on this before doing what is blindingly obvious to everybody else.
I just worry how much pressure the tea party bunch will put on resisting the tax part. They don't seem to be a flexible/pragmatic group.
What pushed the ratings committee off the fence wasn't raw numbers. No one disputes the U.S. debt levels are too high. Both the Democratic White House and the Republican-led U.S. House agree on the need to slice about $4 trillion from the U.S. deficit over roughly a decade.
It was the poisonous politics in Washington that caused S&P to raise the red flag, interviews with S&P analysts over the past few days and its statement show. S&P since the late 1990s has added political risk to its evaluation of a country's credit.
President Barack Obama last Wednesday offered a starkly different plan from Republican House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan on how to reduce the gigantic $14.3 trillion debt load, one that has grown by about 60 percent in less than three years. There is little hard evidence the two sides are ready to reach agreement before the 2012 election.
"The gulf has never been wider," David Beers, the global head of Standard & Poor's sovereign ratings team, told Reuters Insider on Monday.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/04/2...e+Raw+Story%29
S&P belongs to Wall St. They are a not disinterested, mathematical numbers umpire, but fundamentally conflicted in their interests in being paid by Wall St to provide investment ratings for the Wall St sells.
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