The New York attorney general has started an investigation of eight banks to determine whether they provided misleading information to rating agencies in order to inflate the grades of certain mortgage securities, according to two people with knowledge of the investigation.I've said before, repeatedly, that we should have set up a guilloitine in Battery Park for these guys.
The investigation parallels federal inquiries into the business practices of a broad range of financial companies in the years before the collapse of the housing market.
Where those investigations have focused on interactions between the banks and their clients who bought mortgage securities, this one expands the scope of scrutiny to the interplay between banks and the agencies that rate their securities.
The agencies themselves have been widely criticized for overstating the quality of many mortgage securities that ended up losing money once the housing market collapsed. The inquiry by the attorney general of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo, suggests that he thinks the agencies may have been duped by one or more of the targets of his investigation.
But this will do. Years and years of hearings, motions, depositions and trials. A fast execution might have been more merciful.
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