Uh, a little late boys: SEC investigating mortgage ratings agencies. Toxic mortgages rated AAA actually should have been ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ. Oopsie!

Strangest thing to see the SEC FINALLY get off their duffs and do a bit of work. Your government at work folks. Investigating how Moody's and S&P gamed the system and lost billions for investors AFTER the fact, is, well, incompetent at best and corrupt at worst.

The ratings agencies were employed by CDO bundlers to rate the toxic mortgage CDO bundles. The better the rating, the more work they got, the more they got paid.

Triple A!!! AAA!!!! Safest investment on the planet!!!! (Now pay us)

Unfrickingbelievable.

Man, after China and governments around the world realize how bad they got schooled in this mess, they're gonna be PISSED!!! Too bad they didn't read HousingPANIC...

SEC looks at ‘influence’ in credit ratings

The SEC is investigating whether issuers and underwriters of residential mortgage-backed securities “unduly influenced” credit-ratings agencies to give them higher ratings than warranted, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said today at a Senate Banking Committee hearing.

The agencies have blamed the unexpectedly large incidence of mortgage delinquencies in the last year on factors including fraud in mortgage originations, deterioration of loan underwriting standards and a faster-than-anticipated adoption of more restrictive lending standards, which made it difficult for overleveraged borrowers to refinance, he said.

And then investors lost trust in the bond ratings agencies, and then the real fireworks started

How did Bear Stearns get burned so bad? I mean, AAA paper should be gold right?

Wrong.

The two ratings agencies are now seen as incompetent and trustworthy as Bush and Cheney. They were rating subprime mortgage tranches far higher than they ever should have been. And Bear Stearns, pension funds, hedge funds and bond investors got their fingers burned.

Here's an interesting take from bond guru Bill Gross on the ratings agencies, the coming crash in the market, and also how high-yield (junk) bond rates are now soaring, since inventors no longer believe the crap coming out of Moodys and S&P.

Gross says private-equity firms and hedge funds were able to borrow money cheaply until about six weeks ago. "But investors no longer trust the rating services to adequately and fairly rate the bonds they're buying," Gross said. "Basically, bond buyers have become frozen in place."

Bond investors have been willing to let speculators take advantage of their inactivity to buy more assets and pile up returns, he added. And that's probably even more the case with investors in riskier corporate issues, Gross says.

He added: "What's going on in the past few weeks should be registering with bond investors as a substantial change in climate."

HP'ers, get ready for the big one

It's already well underway. And the insiders are getting out.

Knowing what you know now, if you aren't prepared by now, you better hurry. Time indeed is running out.

Robert Rodriquez, chief executive officer of First Pacific Advisors, was even more blunt. "We haven't seen much of a problem in the subprime area [but only] because the pricing is a fraud; the ratings are bullshit," said the two-time recipient of Morningstar's Fund Manager of the Year.

"I don't buy these prices, but as long as someone can provide capital to keep the finger in the dike, the charade will go on."

Rodriguez anticipates a huge drop in the prices of both long-term and high-yield debt and avoids both in his portfolio; as a result, it currently has about 41% of assets in cash. This cautious approach may temper gains, but it also reduces volatility: The fund hasn't suffered a calendar-year loss since Rodriquez took charge in 1984, according to Morningstar.

FLASH: The center no longer holds, and today was the day when it all fell apart. S&P admits to the biggest financial con game of all time.

In order for the Great Housing Con Game to work, the bagholders (the buyers of the toxic subprime and liar's loan crap) had to believe that one day they'd get paid back. Even though this garbage was being lent out to people who lied about their jobs, their income and their ability to pay. Or worse yet to people with no jobs, no credit, no income, no honesty, no problem gaming the system themselves and absolutely positively no possible way to make good on the loans once the Ponzi Scheme ended.

Yes, think Casey Serin. Think David Crisp. Think of all the get-rich-quick failed flippers, think the $30,000 income families buying $800,000 homes, think Phoenix, think Miami, think all the sheeple who thought real estate could only go up and up.

So why did the bagholders of these mortgages (China, hedge funds, pension funds, overseas investors), which were so nicely bundled up into neat little CDO's, think they'd get paid back? Why did they think that obvious hilarious loan garbage was worth the price they were paying?

Because the "unbiased ratings agencies" told them so.

Well, not anymore. S&P, one of the three major CDO ratings agencies, now staring lawsuits, jail sentences and the collapse of their game straight in the face, bitchslapped the housing and mortgage market today and simply came clean, in one of the ugliest financial mea-culpas I've ever seen. Simply put, the charade is over. And hundreds of billions, more likley trillions, will now be lost.

So now, the housing collapse goes into overdrive. The Subprime and Alt-A industries die. Hedge funds worldwide fail. Pension funds screw their retirees. Markets crash. China gets pissed. Lending tightens even more. Demand plummets even more. And home prices crash even faster.

It's all over folks. Now we just count up the damage and look for someone to blame.

S&P finally says subprime is mostly junk - New methodology is death knell for the troubled industry

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - Standard & Poor's just drove a huge harpoon into the heart of the mortgage credit bubble and it's going to take a long time to clean up the mess once the beast finally dies.

S&P, one of the three main credit-rating agencies that served as enablers of the subprime mortgage boom, announced Tuesday that it would lower its ratings on 612 bonds, a small portion of the mortgage-backed securities it had given its seal of approval to.

But the bigger news is that S&P isn't going along with the charade any more. S&P said it would change its methodology for ratings hundreds of billions of dollars in residential mortgage-backed securities.

And it would review its ratings on hundreds of billions of dollars in the more complex collateralized debt obligations based on those subprime loans.

A lot of debt will be downgraded to junk status. A lot of that debt will have to be sold at fire-sale prices. A lot of pension funds and hedge funds that once thrived on the high returns they could get from investing in subprime junk will now lose a lot of money.

S&P's announcement is a death warrant for the subprime industry. No longer will mortgage brokers be able to help buyers lie their way into a home. Fewer stressed homeowners will be able to refinance their mortgage, thus extending and exacerbating the housing bust.

"We do not foresee the poor performance abating," S&P said. Prices will fall, and foreclosures will rise. More mortgage fraud will be uncovered as the tide goes out.

For true HP wonks, you can read the whole nasty report here.