Credit Rating Agencies Responsible for Financial Meltdown

See Wall Street Journal June 22, 2009 Editorial
at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124562476664835519.html#printMode

Per this week's "Treasury reform white paper 'Market discipline broke down as investors relied excessively on credit rating agencies' … After regulators spent decades explicitly demanding that banks and mutual funds hold securities rated by the big rating agencies, regulators now have the nerve to blame investors for paying attention to the ratings. …Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch inflicted upon investors the AAA-rated subprime mortgage-backed security. They also inflicted upon the world's nest eggs the even more opaque AAA-rated collateralized debt obligation (CDO). Without the ratings agency seal of approval -- required by SEC, Federal Reserve and state regulation for many institutional investors -- it would have been nearly impossible to market the structured financial products at the heart of the crisis."