Moody's ratings

[rwarn17588]

I had a hunch for a long, long time there were shenanigans at Moody's Investor Service over its investment ratings. You can't have assign a AAA rating one day and junk status the next without something fishy going on.

Well, it looks like McClatchy News Service found out that Moody's fired analysts that warned of trouble before the 2008 financial meltdown.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/politics/story/77244.html

That's the second major news coup McClatchy's has had in recent years. The other was that it found -- even before the invasion started -- the reasons the Bush Administration gave for invading Iraq were highly suspect.

[FOTD]

" "The story at Moody's doesn't start in 2007; it starts in 2000," said Mark Froeba, a Harvard-educated lawyer and senior vice president who joined Moody's structured finance group in 1997.

"This was a systematic and aggressive strategy to replace a culture that was very conservative, an accuracy-and-quality oriented (culture), a getting-the-rating-right kind of culture, with a culture that was supposed to be 'business-friendly,' but was consistently less likely to assign a rating that was tougher than our competitors," Froeba said.

[guido911]

I had a hunch for a long, long time there were shenanigans at Moody's Investor Service over its investment ratings. You can't have assign a AAA rating one day and junk status the next without something fishy going on.

Well, it looks like McClatchy News Service found out that Moody's fired analysts that warned of trouble before the 2008 financial meltdown.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/politics/story/77244.html

That's the second major news coup McClatchy's has had in recent years. The other was that it found -- even before the invasion started -- the reasons the Bush Administration gave for invading Iraq were highly suspect.

Here is another major news coup from McClatchy's, headlined: "As violence falls in Iraq, cemetery workers feel the pinch." 

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/226/story/20530.html

Or how about this integrity, non-biased headline: "'Those crazy Palins: Todd's half-sister indicted in burglary'" (they later were forced to drop the "Those crazy Palins" part)

Or this hard-hitting story of national significance, headlined:

"Is that really a naked woman in Dick Cheney's sunglasses?"

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/33328.html

Yep, McClatchy sure snags those big stories. But hey, way to get your Bush Derangement Syndrome fix in a thread you started about something completely unrelated. I applaud your creativity.

[USRufnex]

Good thread, rwarn.

Ironic how gweed is calling out McClatchy as an example of "liberal bias" when rwarn quotes a perfectly good story.

Yeah, Guido's tagline these days is a tribute to the CONSERVATIVE ACTIVIST MEDIA PIGS who turned a story about minority kids singing about a new president into one about Obama's "brainwashing"....
"Barack Hussein Obama.... hmm, hmm, hmmm."

Exposing Obama's "Brainwash The Kids" Scheme, With KTRH's Michael Berry
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2009/09/obama_speech_schools.php

The liberal and conservative newsmedia were more than kind to Bush when he pre-emptively sent our troups to invade Iraq rather than the country that spawned the terrorists who hit us on 9-11:  Saudi Arabia.

Bush = Worst prez of my lifetime, barely nudging out Jimmy Carter.

[USRufnex]

Funny how Gweed insists on how evil it was for Obama to use the phrase "spread the wealth" yet completely ignores this story of Wall Street greed and manipulation because he wants to kill the messenger (in this case, McClatchy)...

Which did more DAMAGE to our economy, Guido?
The black woman who thinks Obama's gonna pay her rent/mortgage OR the greed and cronyism and "business friendly" atmosphere at Moody's?

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/politics/story/77244.html

"The story at Moody's doesn't start in 2007; it starts in 2000," said Mark Froeba, a Harvard-educated lawyer and senior vice president who joined Moody's structured finance group in 1997.

"This was a systematic and aggressive strategy to replace a culture that was very conservative, an accuracy-and-quality oriented (culture), a getting-the-rating-right kind of culture, with a culture that was supposed to be 'business-friendly,' but was consistently less likely to assign a rating that was tougher than our competitors," Froeba said.

After Froeba and others raised concerns that the methodology Moody's was using to rate investment offerings allowed the firm's profit interests to trump honest ratings, he and nine other outspoken critics in his group were "downsized" in December 2007.

"As a matter of policy, Moody's does not comment on personnel matters, but no employee has ever been let go for trying to strengthen our compliance function," Adler said.

Moody's was spun off from Dun & Bradstreet in 2000, and the first company shares began trading on Oct. 31 that year at $12.57. Executives set out to erase a conservative corporate culture.

To promote competition, in the 1970s ratings agencies were allowed to switch from having investors pay for ratings to having the issuers of debt pay for them. That led the ratings agencies to compete for business by currying favor with investment banks that would pay handsomely for the ratings they wanted.

Wall Street paid as much as $1 million for some ratings, and ratings agency profits soared. This new revenue stream swamped earnings from ordinary ratings.

"In 2001, Moody's had revenues of $800.7 million; in 2005, they were up to $1.73 billion; and in 2006, $2.037 billion. The exploding profits were fees from packaging . . . and for granting the top-class AAA ratings, which were supposed to mean they were as safe as U.S. government securities," said Lawrence McDonald in his recent book, "A Colossal Failure of Common Sense."

[rwarn17588]

I found it amusing that it took two days for guido to respond, and it was still lame. 

And in case you haven't been paying attention, guido, I've insisted for years on this forum that there was something funny going on in the financial and housing industry -- simply because you don't have real estate values going up 30 and 40 percent per year without something really weird going on behind the scenes.

[guido911]

Good thread, rwarn.

Ironic how gweed is calling out McClatchy as an example of "liberal bias" when rwarn quotes a perfectly good story.

Yeah, Guido's tagline these days is a tribute to the CONSERVATIVE ACTIVIST MEDIA PIGS who turned a story about minority kids singing about a new president into one about Obama's "brainwashing"....
"Barack Hussein Obama.... hmm, hmm, hmmm."

Exposing Obama's "Brainwash The Kids" Scheme, With KTRH's Michael Berry
http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2009/09/obama_speech_schools.php

The liberal and conservative newsmedia were more than kind to Bush when he pre-emptively sent our troups to invade Iraq rather than the country that spawned the terrorists who hit us on 9-11:  Saudi Arabia.

Bush = Worst prez of my lifetime, barely nudging out Jimmy Carter.

You have got to be a complete idiot or else you thought, "How can I prove gweed's point any better". It's not the news story, its the source's erratic history and RW's clear BDS. Really, what does "shenanigans at Moody's Investor Service over its investment ratings" have to do with the war in Iraq? NOTHING. That was the point I was making you mental midget.

Oh, and RW, the delay in my response was because I WAS ON VACATION and I HAD WORK TO DO. Although arguing with the likes of you (as opposed to CF, waterboy and others that actually try) does not require a lot of brain power, there are times that I am not on the nets.

Still, we have those crazy Palins...or more importantly, we have these brainwashed kids (good enuf for ya soccerboy?):

[rwarn17588]

You have got to be a complete idiot or else you thought, "How can I prove gweed's point any better". It's not the news story, its the source's erratic history and RW's clear BDS. Really, what does "shenanigans at Moody's Investor Service over its investment ratings" have to do with the war in Iraq? NOTHING. That was the point I was making you mental midget.

blah blah blah ranting blah blah

The point I made about Iraq -- and now Moody's -- was that McClatchy has a history of breaking stories that no one else has.

OK ... so let's get down to it. What part specifically about the Moody's do you find suspect?

And are you OK with Moody's poor ratings performance in the days leading up to the meltdown?

[guido911]

The point I made about Iraq -- and now Moody's -- was that McClatchy has a history of breaking stories that no one else has.

OK ... so let's get down to it. What part specifically about the Moody's do you find suspect?

And are you OK with Moody's poor ratings performance in the days leading up to the meltdown?

If the story is correct it is outrageous and Moody's should be condemned. But that was never my point. You just couldn't resist jabbing Bush and I was calling you out, just as many in the forum call me out for knocking Obama.

As an aside, if you give props for "breaking stories that no one else has", have you acknowledged Glenn Beck's story on Van Jones or Andrew Breitbart's "prostitute-gate" story on ACORN?  Hell, as to the latter, well known conservative thinker Jon Stewart when after the media:

http://hotair.com/archives/2009/09/16/jon-stewart-to-media-on-acorn-where-the-hell-were-you/

[rwarn17588]

If the story is correct it is outrageous and Moody's should be condemned. But that was never my point. You just couldn't resist jabbing Bush and I was calling you out, just as many in the forum call me out for knocking Obama.

So ... you admit there is no reason to believe the story isn't accurate. Glad you finally cleared that up.

And so there isn't a reason that I shouldn't jab Bush? You don't think an unnecessary war that's cost thousands of lives and a trillion dollars isn't worth jabbing over?

If you want to deal with small-potatoes controversies such as ACORN and teleprompters, go ahead. That's your prerogative.

I'd like to think that an unnecessary, bloody and expensive war and a ratings company that fell down on the job and thus exacerbated the world economy's near-collapse are a tad more important, and that a news service that uncovers these should be spotlighted and praised. But that's just me.

Needless to say, I think your outrage is misplaced. Or just simply warped.

[guido911]

And so there isn't a reason that I shouldn't jab Bush? You don't think an unnecessary war that's cost thousands of lives and a trillion dollars isn't worth jabbing over?

Sure, if you believe the war was unnecessary. But when you take that issue and link it up to an entirely different topic, you come off petty. Kinda like this:

The Tulsa mayoral race is getting very heated. Candidates name-calling, personal attacks, boycotts...Oh, and Obama is a liar. He lied about public funding, lied about military tribunals, lied about no lobbyists in his administration, lied about limiting unemployment if stimulus passed, lied about no taxes on those making less than $250K. Ya see how that works? Makes about as much sense as what you did.

[rwarn17588]

Sure, if you believe the war was unnecessary. But when you take that issue and link it up to an entirely different topic, you come off petty. Kinda like this:

The Tulsa mayoral race is getting very heated. Candidates name-calling, personal attacks, boycotts...Oh, and Obama is a liar. He lied about public funding, lied about military tribunals, lied about no lobbyists in his administration, lied about limiting unemployment if stimulus passed, lied about no taxes on those making less than $250K. Ya see how that works? Makes about as much sense as what you did.

I disagree. It was a comment about McClatchy's ability to get big, big stories that no one else did. One big, big story was about the run-up to the Iraq war; the other was about Moody's wildly inaccurate ratings. Both stories detailed situations that had humongous implications for the entire world.

And if you're still thinking the Iraq war was necessary, well ...

[USRufnex]

Except that there is a Bush connection to Moody's ratings..... Republicans love to talk about "personal responsibility" and how to get tough on crime, drugs, etc etc.... yet when it comes to the wealthy, they use rhetoric like "voluntary compliance" and "self regulating"

ACORN and Welfare queens could never wreak the financial havoc that Wall Street wealth redistributors have wrought on this country.... but go ahead, blame the powerless...

[guido911]

I disagree. It was a comment about McClatchy's ability to get big, big stories that no one else did. One big, big story was about the run-up to the Iraq war; the other was about Moody's wildly inaccurate ratings. Both stories detailed situations that had humongous implications for the entire world.

Well, let's give three cheers up to the National Enquirer for breaking the "big, big" John Edwards extramarital affair story notwithstanding the other stories it breaks.

And yes I still believe the war in Iraq was necessary. Sorry if you can't handle that. No more bribes to families of suicide bombers who kill Israelis, no more terrorist training camps, no more harassing of our planes in the "no fly" zone, oh, and that whole 20 million people now living free and not under the boot of a dictator is also kinda nice. Do I wish there had been the WMD stockpiles? Yes. Do I wish there had been a better post invasion plan? Yes. However, I will never, never, say any war was unnecessary where American soldiers' lives were lost fighting it.

[guido911]

Except that there is a Bush connection to Moody's ratings..... Republicans love to talk about "personal responsibility" and how to get tough on crime, drugs, etc etc.... yet when it comes to the wealthy, they use rhetoric like "voluntary compliance" and "self regulating"

ACORN and Welfare queens could never wreak the financial havoc that Wall Street wealth redistributors have wrought on this country.... but go ahead, blame the powerless...

I knew it. It's Bush's fault!!!!

Oh, and here we go again with those evil rich people out there. All those rich who provide the jobs to people like you; often pay more in taxes per year than you would earn in how many years?; give more to charities that help those "powerless" welfare queens than the likes of you; spend more at shops/stores/restaurants which basically drives the economy...Come clean USRuf, how many people you employ?