It’s the Chicago way.
The Justice Department is investigating whether the Standard & Poor’s credit ratings agency improperly rated dozens of mortgage securities in the years leading up to the financial crisis, The New York Times reported Wednesday.
The investigation began before Standard & Poor’s cut the United States’ AAA credit rating this month, but it’s likely to add to the political firestorm created by the downgrade, the newspaper said. Some government officials have since questioned the agency’s secretive process, its credibility and the competence of its analysts, claiming to have found an error in its debt calculations.
The real “error” was crossing THE ONE.
The Times cites two people interviewed by the government and another briefed on such interviews as its sources. According to people with knowledge of the interviews, the Justice Department has been asking about instances in which the company’s analysts wanted to award lower ratings on mortgage bonds but may have been overruled by other S&P business managers.
If the government finds enough evidence to support a case, it could undercut S&P’s longstanding claim that its analysts act independently from business concerns. The newspaper said it was unclear whether the Justice Department investigation involves the other two major ratings agencies, Moody’s and Fitch, or only S&P.
S&P and other ratings agencies reaped record profits as they bestowed their highest ratings on bundles of troubled mortgage loans, which made the mortgages appear less risky and thus more valuable. They failed to anticipate the deterioration that would come in the housing market and devastate the financial system.
More here: http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9P68KQG0&show_article=1
Let’s dissect that “troubled mortgage loans” thing. The government (Dems in particular) can pat themselves on the back for the collapse of the housing market and devastation of the financial system. Back in 2004, the Democratic Party was part and parcel to the Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae debacle that kicked off the government-dictated subprime lending rates, and subsequent market collapse. They refused to allow regulation of the out of control programs and as a result, failed banks across the United States were seized by the FDIC. Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, and Christopher Dodd repulsed efforts by the Republicans to monitor and prevent the impending collapse.
“There are no problems at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac”:
Fast forward to 2008 after the massive bank failures, when Barney Frank accused bank bailout opponents of being “racially motivated”, and 2009, when Obama’s former Secretary of the Treasury Hank Paulson, and Ben Bernanke, the current Federal Reserve Chairman, threatened Bank of America into accepting TARP.
Standard and Poors was the only credit rating agency with the integrity to do the right thing. Any country that borrows, spends, and wastes taxpayer money on the way to a $14+ trillion debt that exceeds its GDP does not deserve a AAA rating. Obama is a Chicago thug in control of the White House. This is political payback.