Tuesday, August 23, 2011

S&P’s downgrade of the U.S. was apparently S&P’s fault

CEO of S&P, Deven Sharma, is “stepping down”, to be replaced by Citi COO, Douglas Peterson.

I don’t carry any brief for S&P; the company and other ratings companies completely dropped the ball by propping up the housing bubble through the selective use of blinders. But, as the saying goes, I question the timing of this move (TurboTax Timmy Geithner has been publicly frothing at the mouth over S&P’s downgrade decision). On the other hand, maybe it’s just a specimen of Jungian synchronicity.

Meanwhile, the installation of an executive from Citi – one of the big beneficiaries of all that TARP money – does not exactly go a long way toward bolstering my confidence in the ability of S&P to build credibility.

In other Wall St. news, Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs, has hired a defense lawyer for some reason. Meh, that’s gratitude for you, eh, Lloyd?

3 comments:

Yojimbo said...

May just be a private matter unrelated to politics. Or, he may be facing some slap on the wrist civil case from the SEC so the administration can go into election year pointing to the fact that they are going after the "big bankers". If it's political nothing major will happen to Goldie, they are solid dem soldiers.

The Citi appointment is scary. This is truly a thugocracy. On a related but never talked about matter, you can now see how Dodd-Frank and FinReg are going to operate. A few quiet calls by underlings that don't have to book their calls and industry policies change.

RebeccaH said...

It's the crony criminals taking care of the crony criminals. This is the most lawless government ever.

wv: fries - what we'll all be eating because there's nothing else, and what we'll all be selling to each other so we can afford to eat them.

Anonymous said...

Wasn't one of Obama's election points that there wouldn't be big business folks in his administration? Which lie is this, I've forgotten? But he sure came through on "not politics as usual". He couldn't give the Citi exec an ambassadorship. Too low class.

Deborah Leigh