Short diary here. I follow the financial industry closely and find this to be a fitting punishment for one of the worst actors in the 2008 financial meltdown.
Standard & Poor’s will be suspended for a year from rating bonds in one of its most lucrative businesses in a $60 million settlement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
The deal, which the person said may be announced as soon as tomorrow, is the agency’s toughest action yet in an industry blamed for fueling the 2008 financial crisis by assigning inflated grades to risky mortgage debt. Instead of securities created during that period, though, the SEC’s investigation has looked at whether S&P bent its criteria to win business on commercial-mortgage bonds issued in 2011.
http://www.bloomberg.com/...
The credit rating agencies have long worked under the cloak of the First Amendment as a subjective "opinion" firm. That means you cannot be sued for your opinion no matter how harmful it is. They handed out AAA ratings like candy.
Dodd-Frank is changing all that. They are now subject to pay damages for indifferent ratings. And now if today's Bloomberg report is correct they will be banned from their core business for a full year. That might in fact be a death knell for the firm.
Good riddance.