The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap Highlight

At the ratings agencies like Moody’s and Fitch and Standard & Poor’s, which performed the critical-to-the-fraud function of overrating the toxic mortgage securities, high-ranking executives openly discussed in emails the corrupt corporate strategy of giving phony ratings in exchange for cash from the big banks. “Lord help our fucking scam,” wrote one executive from Standard & Poor’s. In another, one of the company’s top analysts complained that the firm’s model for rating mortgages was no more accurate than “flipping a coin.”