It's not often that I discover something that Paul Krugman and I agree on. Krugman is the Nobel prize-winning economist who has lately changed careers to be a leftist columnist for the New York Times, generally taking political positions that make Obama, Pelosi, and Reid seem like card-carrying conservatives.
But this column of his is within an area he has actual expertise, and I think he's spot on when he points out that the credit ratings agencies (like Moody's and Standard & Poor's) deserve a healthy dollop of blame for the financial system meltdown of 2008/2009. He quotes one statistic as evidence that the ratings agencies were deeply corrupt: 93% of all formerly AAA rated mortgage-backed securities are now rated as junk. The securities haven't changed, only their rating.
Yup, that looks like a problem to me. One of the few things I've seen that genuinely appear to need some regulatory reform...
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