This passage illustrates part of the reason why banks bought so many crappy mortgages:

In one email, an S&P analytical staffer emailed another that a mortgage or structured-finance deal was “ridiculous” and that “we should not be rating it.” The other S&P staffer replied that “we rate every deal,” adding that “it could be structured by cows and we would rate it.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 23rd, 2008 at 5:19 am and is filed under Current Events, Finance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.