Standard and Poor’s decision to threaten eurozone countries with ratings downgrades may seem like bad timing. But if it keeps markets on edge, European leaders might be scared enough to crank out some real solutions, rather than the half-baked measures already on tap.
Ignore all the grumbling you will hear in the next few days about Standard & Poor’s. Yes, the ratings agency miscalled tens of billions of dollars of mortgage bonds leading up to the financial crisis. Yes, it’s an organization fraught with conflicts of interest, where debt issuers game the system to get the highest ratings. [...]
Today the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations held a hearing on the role credit ratings agencies played in the financial crisis. These are the companies that gave high marks to securitization deals, like the one Goldman Sachs is currently being sued over, even though the underlying collateral—namely, home loans—was pretty much crap. As today’s hearing [...]
