(Side note: USAA Insurance Company and Bank was incidentally among those that went down the ratings white rabbit hole saying on their homepage "This has everything to do with the USA and nothing to do with USAA." USAA didn't mention the Tea Party antics while the President of the USA did. They didn't mention S&P's assinine ratings from the past. USAA likes a little politics when it suits them. I'm familiar with this pattern of theirs. A while back, they were asking all their members to contact their legislators to protest regulations meant to strengthen the financial industry and stop abuse. However a bank making political insinuations and using it's power to openly influence their members against the bank's own regulators is surely fairly unsavory. This time around they did the politics more subtly. They're goal was to protect their repuation but USAA just can't completely contain themselves in their zeal to encourage their agenda in the political arena.)
As for S&P, can we hold out any hope that a congressman will bring up the fact that AAA ratings in the past were bought and sold? And perhaps in our financial condition the US couldn't afford to do that... ;) I do have a teaspoon full of hope that some discussion will be made about the role of S&P in our country's financial demise in their long term actions of selling AAA ratings of CDO's to the investment banks. One example is that the AAA rated instruments on the books of AIG lost 90 percent of their value. How does this equate to the USA? Discussion, I expect, but not criminal charges, alas.
