Free Republic

What has been distinct about Barack Obama's presidency is his inclination to operate in continuous campaign mode, to deflect attention away from his policy failures and to undermine opposition by politicizing the issues and policy responses he chooses to take up. So now with the president's attorney general Eric Holder having just announced the filing of a $5 billion Department of Justice suit against Standard & Poor's—charging that fraudulent ratings were made on risky mortgage bonds that went into default during the financial crisis of 2008—one has to wonder what the political motivation might be. First, why now? Why has...

(CBS/AP) Following the news Friday of Standard and Poor's downgrade on the U.S. debt, several politicians from both sides of the aisle offered their reactions. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid released a statement: "This makes the work of the joint committee all the more important, and shows why leaders should appoint members who will approach the committee's work with an open mind -- instead of hardliners who have already ruled out the balanced approach that the markets and rating agencies like S&P are demanding." Reid was referring to the special bipartisan congressional committee -- made up of six Democrats...

RPT-UPDATE 1-Italy prosecutors seize Moody's, S&P documents Thu Aug 4, 2011 1:13pm EDT (Fixes dateline) * Magistrates probe "anomalous" share price moves * S&P, Moody's defend their work (adds Moody's comment paragraph 6) MILAN, Aug 4 (Reuters) - Italian prosecutors have seized documents at the offices of rating agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor's in a probe over suspected "anomalous" fluctuations in Italian share prices, a prosecutor said on Thursday. The measure is aimed at "verifying whether these agencies respect regulations as they carry out their work," Carlo Maria Capistro, who heads the prosecutors' office in the southern town of...

KPMG and PwC eye rating move By Richard Milne and Rachel Sanderson in London Published: May 17 2010 03:00 | Last updated: May 17 2010 03:00 KPMG and PwC, two of the world's largest accounting firms, have considered entering the credit rating business, in a move that would pitch them against the current top three - and heavily criticised - agencies Moody's, Standard & Poor's and Fitch. John Griffith Jones, chairman of KPMG in the UK and co-chair in Europe, told the Financial Times it had discussed the move as - being one of the four biggest accounting firms in...

Calpers burns in subprime fire 24 Oct 2009, 0000 hrs IST, REUTERS SAN FRANCISCO: Faced with huge losses on subprime loans, Calpers is suing the rating agencies which it said misled them by giving top ratings to mortgage bond funds which later turned out to be a house of cards. Calpers also was overcharged for foreign exchange transactions, says state Attorney General Brown, who is suing bank State Street. The market rally this year also has helped. “The recovery now is showing our asset strategy is doing pretty well,” Oliveira said. Calpers’ losses have been cut by about half from...

AP Ackman: Bond insurers need another downgrade Wednesday June 11, 4:30 pm ET By Joe Bel Bruno, AP Business Writer Activist hedge fund manager Ackman says more downgrades are needed for MBIA, Ambac NEW YORK (AP) -- William Ackman, the billionaire activist hedge fund manager, said Wednesday that the recent downgrades of bond insurers and other financials might not have gone far enough. The founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, who is open about shorting bond insurers such as MBIA Inc., said rating agencies need to dig deeper into the companies to get a better idea of what is on...

SEC readies report on credit rating agencies Stephanie Baum 23 Apr 2008 The US Securities and Exchange Commission will issue a report this summer following an examination of credit rating agencies and their roles in the credit crunch as they prepare new rules governing their behavior. SEC chairman Christopher Cox told the US Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs that the focus of the SEC’s research is to determine whether the ratings agencies violated their conflict of interest rules to determine their clients’ credit ratings. Cox told the committee that the SEC is looking at requiring more transparency...