Credit Rating Agencies Likely to Evade Dodd-Frank Provision to End Conflict of Interest

One of the key issues in the financial crisis was the fact that mortgage backed securities (MBS), filled with subprime mortgages of questionable quality, managed to get Aaa ratings from the bond-rating agencies. While ignorance and stupidity may explain much of what happens on Wall Street, there were people at the rating agencies who did raise questions about the quality of these securities. In one e-mail at S&P an analyst complained that it would rate an MBS as investment grade if it wer...