Reply #24: K&R

[JDPriestly]

They needed some help laundering the risk out of those shaky loans, and they got it. According to a Senate investigation concluded earlier this year S&P and Moody's, the two dominant ratings agencies, “issued the AAA ratings that made ... mortgage backed securities ... seem like safe investments, helped build an active market for those securities, and then, beginning in July 2007, downgraded the vast majority of those AAA ratings to junk status.” And when they did so, it “precipitated the collapse of the markets and, perhaps more than any other single event, triggered the financial crisis (PDF)."

http://www.alternet.org/story/153217/the_absurd_zombie_lie_about_the_economy_right-wingers_desperately_cling_to_--_and_why_it%27s_totally_wrong?page=4

And now, the ratings agencies are downgrading the credit ratings of various countries -- because those same countries bought the securities that the rating agencies fraudulently overrated in order to rev up the market.

Who is ultimately responsible for the mortgage crisis then and the crisis in national debt now?

Any ideas?