When it comes to the post-crisis world of American finance, there's one thing we can all agree on:
Something's got to give when it comes to ratings agencies.
Over the past decade, we've all witnessed the “big three'sâ€? role in the credit crisis. S&P, Moody's and Fitch gave their famous AAA ratings to an array of troubled securities, companies and nations. Not only did they issue the wrong ratings – and correct those ratings far too late – but their dubious business model was put under the spotlight, too… ripe with conflict of interest and suspicious relationships with their Wall Street clients.
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AAA Ratings: A Grim Fairy Tale
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.�
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