Bloomberg News:
Ron Grassi says he thought he had retired five years ago after a 35-year career as a trial lawyer.
Now Grassi, 68, has set up a war room in his Tahoe City, California, home to single-handedly take on Standard & Poor's, Moody's Investors Service and Fitch Ratings. He's sued the three credit rating firms for negligence, fraud and deceit.
Credit rating - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Credit Ratings : Credit Ratings News and Photos - chicagotribune.com
Moody Ratings Fiasco - National Business News - Portfolio.com
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
Why can't a ratings division be a government agency? We have other agencies, FDIC, etc.? They aren't perfect by any means, but hey, look at what these so called rating agencies have done. Enron, should have been the wakeup call, but nothing was done then and it looks like nothing will be done now to dismantle these crooked rackets that sell high ratings on junk. It's business as usual. How can anyone, especially our government, trusts these crooked ratings firms and allow them to stay in business?
Of course the credit rating firms committed "negligence, fraud and deceit." - how much more obvious could it be?
Who profits=Wall Street Banks+Hedge Funds
Who pays=the most vulnerable people in America and the world
A class war before our eyes=wealthiest segment saved and most vulnerable, poorest people pay
Bankrupt the government to save the banks=No money for food+scholarships+...=deeply immoral
So, it appears that we have changed republicans controlled by banks for democrats controlled by banks, and we are going to call this "change"? Why are the elected representatives not going after the credit rating firms for negligence, fraud and deceit????? We truly have to hope his suit wins!
At the very least they - the rating agency's - were compliant.
"Senator Gullible, you are herewith instructed to add to page 6,342 of the next spending bill a paragraph which says that everything we have ever done to hijack the credit-rating system is 'legal.' Be sure that the wording makes it fully clear that it is fully retroactive. The agreed-upon payment of $45 million will be wire-transferred to your Honduras account #54 upon confirmation that these orders have been carried out by you."
Ahem. Don't think I'm joking.
We are all staring a blatant securities-fraud squarely in the face, and in the process we are once again reminded of just how thoroughly both the United States Senate and the media are "PWN3D."
The conflict of interest and perception of corruption is so blatant it is unbelievable with these guys. We need perp walks ASAP on all credit rating agency companies. They cannot and must not ever be in any adjacent business in the financial industry or another cabal will likely grow and end disastrously.
If we are serious about ending boom bust cycles, we must start here. This was ground zero where trash was rating AAA. There are no more blatant violators, unless they can give up people that paid for ratings.
It's the credit rating mafia, stupid!
Duhhhhh -- this is a no-brainer.
Here's the scam: set up a biz that "rates" other businesses -- a financial institution, like a bank, for instance -- and claim that the bank is in "tip top" shape!!! and people can feel secure when doing business with it . . . all the while, not telling the people doing business with the bank, that your credt rating business is actually getting kickbacks from the bank itself -- to give it a good rating -- !!!!!!
That way, everybody's on the same page -- everybody's got a stake in making sure that every other part of the scam works -- everybody looks the other way and pretends that everybody knows what they're doing . . . even tho everybody knows that it's all a house of cards.
The most amusing part of all this is, the perpetrators have been so sucessful at passing themselves off as legitimate businesspeople -- economic royalty, if you will . . . when they're no different from any two-it mafia thug that can be found in any alley of any city in the world.
Everybody needs to stop thinking our failures were the cause of one party or another. BOTH PARTIES have been complacent in the destruction we are now experiencing. Bush or Clinton are the same anyway you look at it. Two peas in a pod from two so-called different parties. The entire party structure was a fluke up until Obama. They can't scare him, force him, or otherwise make him conform to their ways. Obama is a loose cannon and they hate it. That's the only reason why we are seeing CHANGE!
Agree that BOTH PARTIES are corrupt to the hilt.
Disagree about Obama. He is just another in the long list of pawns.
These discredited credit rating agencies have been in the tank for the chief architects of the sub-prime crisis. The whole financial system is proving to be more corrupt than the politicians.
The world is finally seeing how life really is behind the curtains, and it ain't pretty! The rich really DO live in a different world along side the poor and pays them absolutely NO attention whatsoever. They swat us away like flies. It's like "if we do this, we will keep the poor people out and make it safer for us to make MORE money" and along came the dreaded CREDIT RATING organizations to separate the "good" from the "bad" so to speak.
And we'll give higher rates of interest, service charges and anything else we can get away with to the poor to keep them paying for the rest of their lives and not able to afford anything better. In that way, all the "better" stuff is available to us more freely and we won't have to defend ourselves for having them because we can AFFORD them and the poor can't.
Same as it ever was...
More thieves and liars...hang them too.
I think if you have a person, or group of people, who are a de-facto part of governemtal structures, without being subject to any checks-and-balances, without having to abide by human rights and without having to offer due process, than you are having something that can be described as being a state within the state, or a entity that is above the law.
The government rerpesents - or ought to represent- the people. If a group becomes of such an importance that without its cooperation the government could no longer function than it needs either to be nationialized or dismanteled. If the government cannot get itself to do that, it simply doesn't do its job.
That's pretty much the philosophical basis of socialism. Doens't sound so bad, does it? If it affects people's lives in huge ways, then the people get a say in how it's run. The alternative is that the people are at the mercy of forces over which they have no control, not even with their votes. So can we openly proclaim ourselves socialists now? Please?
Wall STreet owns the government. It can do as it likes.
We, the people, have the power to take ownership of our country BACK from all those who hate America. All we have to do is FIGHT them. Make them pay for their actions of destruction. Don't give them anymore of our business until they CLEAN UP THEIR ACT OR GET THE EFF OUT!
So sad - as HuffPost's own headline reads this morning "OUTRAGE!" that the banksters KILLED, and then CELEBRATED killing, the Foreclosure Relief bill in the Senate yesterday - with the clueless Obama NOT LIFTING A FINGER to help publicize either the Mortgage Relief or Credit Card relief bills !!!!!
THIS IS FOLLY !! In no time at all, Americans ARE going to BLAME OBAMA for "Wall St. OWNS the government" - and rightly so, IF the buck does not stop at Obama's desk, he has no business being in oval office.
(As I've written in previous post, it takes JUST OVER A YEAR for American public to TURN on a popular politician - Bush Sr. went from 80%+ approval just after winning Gulf War-1 in March 1991 to less than 45% votes in November 1992 (because of the Bush-1 Recession, in fact),
and the guy who kicked Bush out of office in 1992, Bill Clinton, LOST BOTH of his Democrat majorities in House and Senate just 2 years later, in 1994.
Go ask Bill Clinton HOW FAST the two years 1993-1995, went by!
Loading comments…
| 04/30/09 08:44 PM