They are spot on that Basel regulations didn't prevent this happening, though.
And it so happens that the rating rules used by the big agencies seem to have been suspiciously pro-cyclical, ie using past data to evaluate future likelihood of default, in defiance of the most bsic rule of investing (the past is not an indicator of future performance). In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
Investment banking is the problem, and European banks can be blamed in so far as they were pushed by everybody to be as "sexy" as American investment banks, and yielded to that friendly pressure. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
