thefilmarchive.org July 27, 2012 CRAs such as S&P have been subject to criticism in the wake of large losses beginning in 2007 in the collateralized debt obligation (CDO) market that occurred despite being assigned top ratings by the CRAs. Credit ratings of AAA (the highest rating available) were given to large portions of even the riskiest pools of loans. Investors trusting the low-risk profile that AAA implies, purchased large amounts of CDOs that later became unsaleable. Those that could be sold often took staggering losses. For instance, losses on 0.7 million worth of CDOs issued by Credit Suisse Group added up to about 5 million, despite being rated AAA by S&P.[17] Companies pay S&P to rate their debt issues. As a result, some critics have contended that S&P is beholden to these issuers and that its ratings are not as objective as they ought to be and that, in fact, this "pay to play" model makes their ratings meaningless at best and perhaps would more accurately be compared to the role of the "shill" in a game of three card monte. In April 2009, the company called for "new faces" in the Irish government, which was seen as interfering in the democratic process. In a subsequent statement they said they were "misunderstood".[18] Some critics have pointed out that the company and other rating agencies were part of the cause of the global financial crisis of 2008--2009, for example when Moody's downgraded Freddie Mac[19] or, to quote Time, when "both agencies ...

Tags: business suit, playstation, sales (job title), lake, eye, person, jerusalem (city/town/village), syria (country), city, low, ps2, wii, nintendo, ps3, games, credit, israel (country), xbox, first, cash

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and get loads more!