Senate committee claims credit rating agencies were not accurate

It's nice to see that they confirmed what everyone knew.

A probe of the credit-rating industry by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations found that firms used outdated models, were influenced by their clients and waited too long to downgrade investments as the collapse in the housing market intensified in the year before the financial crisis.

The probe shows that some employees at the credit-rating companies were hungry for fees and apparently willing to compromise objective analysis of the quality of investments, according to material released Thursday.

One e-mail suggests that a Moody's employee explicitly agreed to negotiate ratings for investments based on a promise of future fees.