<i>Newsweek</i>: Credit Rating Agencies Are Getting Off Easy

: Credit Rating Agencies Are Getting Off Easy

Moody's and Standard & Poor's, the two giants of the industry, are still around despite causing the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars by badly rating subprime-mortgage-backed securities. Not only that, they are basically doing business the same way, taking fat fees from the investment banks whose securities they rate. In testimony before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on Wednesday, a former Moody's managing director, Eric Kolchinsky, alleged that the firm was criminally deceiving investors by purportedly inflating ratings on securities even into the current year, long after the subprime scam had been exposed and the market crash had occurred.

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