Obama 9 -- Its Been a Whole Year Now

[Patman]

Re: Obama 9 -- Its Been a Whole Year Now

It wasn't just the fact the assets' values were mispriced, it was the appreciation of those assets driven in large part by cheap money that created the bubble. Moreover, very few risk models used by i-banks or ratings agencies ever considered the fact these assets c/would decline in value over time. I've been dealing with some of the ratings agencies this year, and they're still some of the biggest tools around. "Well, yeah we could rate that structure AA, but if you overcollateralize to X%, we'll rate it AAA, and you can pay us an extra $145,000 for the additional review and monitoring." Why they haven't been called to account for their "AAA"-mania, and subsequent downgrades that really started the ball rolling, still confounds the hell out of me. If any idiot in Congress, the SEC or White House doesn't see an inherent conflict in issuers paying for ratings, they should all resign or shoot themselves.

I still think its at the level of "most people neither know or care how this stuff works"... frankly I only care so much as it affects the other things. So, people in the system are part of the system in general so that's who the advisors will tend to be.

Its all so very depressing... over 400 days and counting and none of this has been addressed... but we're >< that much closer to solving human suffering folks