U.S. Launches Revenge-Attack Against S&P

Posted by Wealth Wire - Thursday, February 7th, 2013

On February 5^th, 2013; we learned something. We learned precisely how long of a memory-span that the U.S. government believes Market Sheep to possess: 18 months. How do we know this? Because 18 months to the day after credit-rating agency Standard & Poors announced it had “downgraded” the U.S. government’s (fraudulent) “AAA” credit rating, the U.S. government has announced its revenge.

It is “suing” S&P for “inflated credit ratings” which, according to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder were “central to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” Fans of either the ironic or absurd are warned at this point that reading further carries a direct risk of becoming dangerously over-stimulated.

Those at all familiar with our markets or general economic reporting know there are three behemoths who currently dominate the credit ratings business (Moody’s and Fitch being the other two), and at the time when S&P committed its alleged transgressions they were essentially the exclusive sources for credit-rating data in the U.S. economy and its markets.

Today, only one of those three corporations is being sued; the one which (by remarkable coincidence) happened to downgrade the credit rating of the U.S. government exactly 18 months earlier. For the many readers out there who are believers in “remarkable coincidences” (and who thus disregarded the previous sentence); undoubtedly you are all telling yourselves the same thing: S&P was doing something different/more nefarious than the other credit ratings agencies.

Let’s see what the lawyers representing S&P have to say about precisely that point:

“We will vigorously defend S&P against these unwarranted claims…The fact is that S&P’s ratings were based on the same subprime mortgage data available to the rest of the market – including U.S. government officials who in 2007 publicly stated that problems in the subprime market appeared to be contained…”

Let me expand upon that statement, because truly S&P could have said much more. When the S&P spokesperson stated that “S&P’s ratings were based on the same subprime data”, she could have easily added that the ratings themselves were virtually identical to those of the other two ratings agencies; and their “analysis” of market conditions was so similar it was if all three were reading off the same Script.

So we have three trusted institutions all reading off of the same “don’t worry, be happy” Script, yet only one of the three is being attacked as a Villain. Who wrote the Script for the ratings agency Choir? Why, the U.S. government, of course – now playing the role of the Aggrieved Victim.

However, the U.S. government rarely speaks for itself any more when it comes to its own economy. When your lead talking-head on the economy is the mumbly, absurdly under-qualified tax-cheat, Tim Geithner; this is no great surprise.

So where was the Script printed for the benefit of the ratings agency Choir, and the Wall Street Vampires; who used all that happy-talk to scam the world for $trillions? On the same Federal Reserve printing press which was/is cranking-out infinite quantities of U.S. greenbacks.

The U.S. government (“World’s Only Superpower”) allows a cabal of private bankers to do most of its talking (and apparently most of its thinking) for it when it comes to running the U.S. economy. And the ring-leader of that cabal (i.e. the head of that private corporation) is Benjamin Shalom Bernanke. So when S&P states that in 2007 “U.S. government officials…publicly stated” that the subprime time-bomb “appeared to be contained”; the person it was/is pointing its finger at is B.S. Bernanke.

Specifically, S&P was referring to B.S. Bernanke’s notorious media-tour in 2007; when he would gleefully announce to anyone/everyone who pointed a microphone at him that the U.S. housing market was headed for “a soft landing”, sending U.S. stock markets to then-record highs. So in fact, the ratings agency Choir was nothing more than B.S. Bernanke’s back-up chorus.

So here we have the U.S. government suing S&P (and only S&P) for parroting its own happy-talk. But it gets worse. While B.S. Bernanke was delighting listeners with his “soft-landing” predictions in 2007; it seems that he and the rest of the Federal Reserve cabal were saying something much different to each other…behind closed doors…in 2006, according to a clip recently put out by “PBS” titled:

Records: Federal Reserve Officials Foresaw, Joked About Housing Bubble in 2006

The clip includes anecdotes noting that already in 2006 Fed officials were aware of homebuilders being forced to offer large “incentives” (i.e. bribes) to try to get exhausted buyers to soak-up the bubble supply, and engaging in open shams (some might say “fraud”) to dupe potential buyers into thinking local housing conditions were more robust than they actually were. Indeed, by this time the phrase “Liar’s Loans” had already made its way into the mainstream media vocabulary.

Binyamin Applebaum, the New York Times sycophant who doggedly defends B.S. Bernanke throughout the PBS clip was adamant: “no one understood the downside risks” to the U.S. housing market and economy in 2006 as well as Bernanke. Yet in 2007, Bernanke was quite content to keep pumping-up markets with his “soft landing” happy-talk.

If this revenge-attack ever makes it to trial (i.e. an open, public trial); then three guesses who will be the first “witness for the defense”? And his happy-talk then was nothing new to B.S. Bernanke. In July 2005, a mere six months before being appointed Chairman of the Federal Reserve; B.S. Bernanke wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal entitled “The Goldilocks Economy”.

The same economic genius who (we are told) knew better than anyone “the downside risks” to the U.S. economy in 2006 published an article only months earlier; talking about an economic fantasy-world where U.S. house prices, economic growth, and (of course) the markets could keep going up and up and up, forever.

The scenario seems to be laid out pretty clearly in front of us. We have the U.S. government launching an apparent revenge-attack on a credit rating agency whose actual “crime” (in the eyes of its attacker) was daring to nudge the U.S. government’s absurdly fraudulent credit rating a tiny step in the direction of sanity/reality.

We have a defendant who has already publicly mapped-out its defense: if we ‘go down’, we’re taking everyone else down with us (starting with B.S. Bernanke). What could change between now and some hypothetical trial date? Referring to the same Bloomberg article cited at the beginning:

…“It’s going to be a tricky time for ratings agencies,” said Fred Ponzo, a capital market analyst at Greyspark Partners in London, said in a telephone interview. “S&P is probably just the first to face the music.”

Those new to the Theater of the Absurd may automatically assume that the U.S. government must make those other ratings agencies “face the music” – rather than only attacking one-third of this music trio. Let me introduce those readers to the banksters’ $500+ trillion “LIBOR fraud.”

More than a dozen multinational banks collaborate, anonymously, behind closed doors to “set the LIBOR interest rate” (London Inter-Bank Offer Rate); supposedly by each independently submitting their own number. Yet we had our lying governments, corrupt regulators, and inane mainstream media attempting to tell us initially that only one of those banks (Barclay’s) “conspired” to rig the LIBOR rate.

Obviously one member of a committee cannot “rig” any outcome in a process where they have only one, equal vote; any more than one member of a Choir can poison the minds of market participants by singing the same lyrics as the rest of the Choir. What our governments and pseudo-regulators lack in integrity they make up for with their audacity.

*Post courtesy of Jeff Nielson at Bullion Bulls Canada.

http://www.wealthwire.com/news/economy/4516?r=1

Holder Cites ‘Egregious’ Conduct by McGraw-Hill, S&P

By Phil Mattingly & Edvard Pettersson - Feb 6, 2013 5:26 AM GMT+0700

The U.S. is seeking as much as $5 billion in penalties from McGraw-Hill Cos. (MHP) and its Standard & Poor’s unit as punishment for inflated credit ratings that Attorney General Eric Holder said were central to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-05/u-s-files-lawsuit-against-mcgraw-hill-standard-poor-s.html

Neil Barofsky on U.S. Lawsuit Against S&P