, Columnist
Ratings Agencies Told Investors What They Wanted to Hear
In which two finance professors conclude that ratings agencies were in the business of helping investors rip themselves off, which seems about right to me.
A popular narrative of the ratings agencies' role in the financial crisis goes something like:
This is the theory under which the investors, and the U.S. government, have gone and sued the ratings agencies, reasoning that the agencies' job was to tell the investors what not to invest in, and that the agencies did not do their job.