How the ratings agencies have managed to emerge from the credit crisis unscathed and unregulated is a mystery…and a sham.

“Nothing is ever clear or certain in public,� we wrote in The New Empire of Debt. “Every error is someone else's fault. That is why so many men prefer it. The public world is so surrounded in fog that he thinks he sees half-naked nymphs behind every tree and $100 bills under every cushion.�