• C++ Programming for Financial Engineering
    Highly recommended by thousands of MFE students. Covers essential C++ topics with applications to financial engineering. Learn more Join!
    Python for Finance with Intro to Data Science
    Gain practical understanding of Python to read, understand, and write professional Python code for your first day on the job. Learn more Join!
    An Intuition-Based Options Primer for FE
    Ideal for entry level positions interviews and graduate studies, specializing in options trading arbitrage and options valuation models. Learn more Join!

Credit-Rating Companies `Sold Soul,' Employees Said

Yet their Bxxx Sxxx can still move the market a lot!

The system itself is ridiculous: is it possible to "rate" independently with huge fee from clients. :-k Won't they also take responsibility for the falling too?
 
The headline is a bit misleading in light of the actual quote by the Moody's employee, and the CEO's statement which appears at the end of the piece.

The irony in the theme is hard to top. In John Moody's autobiography, "The Long Road Home," he details being offered a bribe in order to misrepresent the data in a report. The offer came at a time (about a hundred years ago, if I recall) when he was emerging from insolvency. He turned it down. So it's really not ridiculous. People don't have to be crooked.

If, in fact, the Moody's employees did "sell their souls," (instead of simply "feeling like it," as the email says -- and there is a difference), Mr. Moody must be spinning in his grave.

I find the entire premise, right down to the choice of words, to be almost eerie in light of Mr. Moody's story.

Here it is in his own words (cited on my blog):

An immense change in manners and morals had been slowly creeping through society since well before the [first world] war, and was now reaching its fruition. Moral standards especially were changing -- or were going out altogether. This was evident in business as well as in social circles. The old business ethics were well nigh shot to pieces -- especially in big business -- during that era of greed. All sorts of practices which would have been utterly taboo a quarter century before, were now becoming commonplace. The question, "Is it honest?" became more and more overshadowed by the other question, "Can we get away with it?"...I have told of an instance where, many years ago, a large corporation was ready to hand me a substantial bribe to help them fool the government...such methods seemed as common in big business as snowflakes in Labrador, and were scarcely questioned as being illegitimate...

...Such had become our modern temper; and with it life was speeding up. Though the whole world was bankrupt and none of the major...problems had been settled; though racketeering, bootlegging, business rascality, and political corruption flourished as never before; though morality between the sexes was more and more being laughed to scorn -- yet we all thought we were living in an era of splendid progress and great spiritual awakening...

...Yes, it was a golden age while it lasted. We did not know how speedily we were riding for a fall; how we were heading, ever faster, toward an economic cataclysm such as the modern world had never dreamed could be.
 
Back
Top