Wasn't this the Fed and SEC's job to begin with? Fail. Blaming the rating agencies, when the real culprit is the incompetents in gov't and now that want to convince citizens up is actually down. A comedy of errors run by stooges.
i agree the govt is incompetent, but they didn't sell the AAA rated CDO's, the banks did. and the banks were allowed to go buck wild selling them because 1. people wanted them, and 2. they were rated AAA by the rating agencies so they were deemed 'safe' forms of investments, good enough for pensions, endowments, etc who are only allowed to invest in AAA rated investments. so it wasn't the gov't fault on that end. Their wrongdoing is another topic entirely.
The fact is that the FED has handed 3 trillion dollars to the ECB to finance EU operations because they are not allowed to print money and it is making interest on that while it appears as debt in the balance sheet. How much of US debt is really owned by foreigners? Not even half of the reported debt. The rest is intra-government debt. Get the facts straight so you will now who the emperor is.
Your logic is flawed, those rating is unsolicited. So you prefer people keep doing wrong things, if government asks them to do it.
ratings agencies are paid to do a job. the problem isnt asking them to do it, the problem is they don't know what they're doing. they see themselves as the defacto authority so they slap a rating on whatever they want where they see fit. their accounting skills obviously do not accomodate the power they hold over markets. paying your accountant to do your taxes and they tell you what you owe is normal. paying your accountant to do your taxes and he pockets the fees and makes up a number off the top of his head is not doing his job. and they are out there.