<story><title>93% of 2006 AAA-rated subprime mortgage-backed securities now rated junk</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/opinion/26krugman.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>btilly</author><text>When people say they will act one way and have financial incentives to act another, expect them to follow the financial incentives.&lt;p&gt;Appropriate regulation can help for a bit.  But unfortunately the regulated party has incentives to provide incentives (such as contributions to political campaigns) to gain control of the regulations.  This leads to regulatory capture that then renders the regulations ineffective.&lt;p&gt;In a perfect world we&apos;d be forcing the banks right now to write down securities that took a hit, forcing them to declare losses, which would mean that they wouldn&apos;t be paying out absurd bonuses.  This would absorb the money we gave them from the bailout.  In a slightly less perfect world we&apos;d be enacting useful regulations that would avoid this problem returning for a few decades (such as happened during the Great Depression).&lt;p&gt;In the real world we gave the banks a big bailout, have let them mark securities to models of their choice, and they paid themselves big bonuses on their &quot;profits&quot;.  Of course they are still sitting on lots of toxic securities (like bad CMBS and the junk bonds issued by private equity) that they have not marked down yet.  When that blows up we have good odds that they&apos;ll ask for another bailout.  And the behavior of both parties says that the leadership will try to get it for them.  They nearly didn&apos;t manage to deliver it last time, and given the public outrage since, they may not be able to deliver it next time.&lt;p&gt;This could lead to interesting times.  Interesting times.</text></comment>
<story><title>93% of 2006 AAA-rated subprime mortgage-backed securities now rated junk</title><url>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/26/opinion/26krugman.html</url><text></text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>matasar</author><text>It seems to me that rating agencies should be paid by the institutional investors that buy the bonds, not the banks trying to sell them. That might help the incentives line up better.&lt;p&gt;Am I crazy? Nobody suggests this, and I think I&apos;m missing something crucial here.</text></comment>