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Tuesday, February 05, 2013

S&P Expects U.S. Lawsuit Over Its Mortgage Ratings

Standard & Poor’s says the government plans to file a civil lawsuit alleging wrongdoing by the agency when it gave high ratings to mortgage debt securities that later plunged in value and fueled the 2008 financial crisis.

S&P said Monday that it has been told by the Justice Department that it intends to file a civil lawsuit focusing on S&P’s ratings on some mortgage debt securities in 2007. A suit would mark the first enforcement action by the federal government against a major rating agency over the issue.

The big rating agency denies any wrongdoing and says any lawsuit would be without factual or legal merit.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is what they get for lowering Obama's credit rating..... Just Chicago politics.

Anonymous said...

S & P gives ratings to Salisbury and Wicomico County as well.

Anonymous said...

They also get paid by Salisbury and Wicomico to rate their bond offerings.

I have always been critical about the method - the only rating agency that gets paid by the invester is Egan & Jones. Most all of the others are compensated by the bond issuer. In essence - it is not to rating agency's advantage to give a municipality a negative rating because they will possibly miss-out on compensation. So what do they do - they turn their cheek the other way and often overlook the negatives.

Anonymous said...

So after all this fiscal robbery by banks, pols, n Fed S&P is the only one paying a price ....Holder is a joke