No... The game isn't fixed at all...
But in this case, S&P just a few weeks before had sworn before a judge that its reassurances about objectivity, integrity and independence were not legally binding, vague, and so generalized as to be essentially meaningless.
Yet when I contacted this company, they sent me exactly, and I mean exactly, the same reassurances about objectivity, integrity, and independence that they themselves had laughed at as "mere puffery," "vague," and "so generalized that a reasonable investor would not depend" on them.
Then they went on to deride the plaintiffs in their lawsuit for not being smart enough to do their own research and make their own assessments about the meaning of an S&P rating, and the value of its reassurances of independence and integrity. Yet us reporters are apparently still expected to take such assurances at face value, which if my math is correct means that in their eyes, we must be even dumber than the investors in the products they rate. What a bunch of assholes!
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/bl ... s-20130621" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
