2008 Standard & Poor = 2002 Arthur Andersen

Smoking gun time... From the New York Times...

Devan Sharma, president of S&P, said in a written statement, “It is by now clear that a number of the assumptions we used in preparing our ratings on mortgage-backed securities issued between the last quarter of 2005 and the middle of 2007 did not work.”

John A. Yarmuth, a Democrat from Kentucky, chose to read aloud from an instant-message conversation between two S&P employees in the firm’s structured product division.

Official 1: By the way, that deal is ridiculous

Official 2: I know, right. The model definitely doesn't capture half the risk.

Official 1: We should not be rating it

Official 2: We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it

Official 1: There is a lot of risk associated with it. I personally don’t feel comfy signing off as a committee member.

It is time for us, the good people in the media to ask. Why the fuck is the Hong Kong govt still taking rating from these jokers seriously.

And why are they making us take these rating up the arse, through our MPF (page 4)(中文版)?





係時候兜口兜面問曾蔭權、曾俊華、(and my current favourite)迫金局主席范鴻齡，點解要我地D錢卑 S＆P 出嘅 rating 強姦？