Timothy Geithner's Revenge: A Broken Bond Rating System

One of the factors that made it easy for the housing bubble to be inflated to ever more dangerous levels was the conduct of the credit rating agencies. They gave every subprime mortgage backed security (MBS) in sight top investment grade ratings. This made it easy for Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and the rest to sell their junk bonds all over the world.

There was a simple reason the credit rating agencies rated subprime MBS as AAA: money. The banks issuing the MBS pay the rating agency. If the bi...