Investors "weren't so much buying a security" as they "were buying a triple-A rating," according to business journalists Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera.
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Journalist Michael Lewis argues that the low pay of credit rating agency employees allowed security issuers to game the ratings of their securities.
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The new, complex securities of "structured finance" used to finance subprime mortgages could not have been sold without ratings by the "Big Three" rating agencies — Moody's Investors Service, Standard & Poor's, and Fitch Ratings.
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