This seems a lot more like CYA to me than a blithe admission of incompetence. Unfortunately for Fitch, I can still smell the A. I'm also getting a whiff of potentially actionable lack of diligence...
Of course, the IT guys could have asked a "Tanta" to look em over beforehand
Tanta has spent so many hours of her life with her buddies in IT writing the "database dictionary," and with her buddies on the trading floor consulting over "tape cracking," that she has enough merit badges to cover two girl scout sashes.
I know tons of IT guys. They used to stand in the entrance to my cubicle and refuse to let me hide from them until I helped them with their problems, because they know what they don't know and they are not bozos.
Poor little digital boxes. Having garbage crammed down their throats akin to a goose targeted for foie gras, regurgitating said garbage in an entirely unexpected manner, and then getting blamed for the mess on the carpet.
I sensed bursting blood vessels yesterday when you commented about this.
From my reading of this, Fitch was purposely unclear about what criteria they were using before. Correct me if I'm wrong, but "front ratio" should be simple to calculate if you have income data. AFAICT, Fitch was using a simple front ratio value when there was I data available, and some bogus less-than-50% value when no I was stated. Now they're going to a back ratio value (with a 50% DTI on the front end when no income data is available).
This should have a huge impact on the predicted performance of these loans.
Imagine giving the task of underwriting to a 6th grader with only a basic math background and a five minute talk on what a mortgage is. They'd still do a better job than Fitch.
It is just almost unbelievable that they Fitch would put on paper just how patently incompetent their methods were.
One moment....let me get this straight. The reason they didn't downgrade a lot of this stuff earlier, was, I think I recall, that they weren't using much in the way of forward looking info.
Doesn't this change pretty much guarantee a massive downgrade coming up real soon?
*S&P Puts 207 U.S. Alt-A RMBS Classes On CreditWatch Negative Page 1/14
NEW YORK (Standard & Poor's) Aug. 7, 2007--Standard & Poor's Ratings Services today placed its ratings on 207 classes of U.S. residential mortgage-backed
securities (RMBS) backed by U.S. first-lien Alternative A (Alt-A) mortgage collateral issued from the beginning of October 2005 through the end of December 2006 on CreditWatch with negative implications.
The complete ratings list is included in "U.S. Alt-A RMBS Classes Affected By Aug. 7, 2007, CreditWatch Actions," available on RatingsDirect, the real-time Web-based source for Standard & Poor's credit ratings, research, and risk
analysis. The list can also be found on Standard & Poor's Web site at http://www.standardandpoors.com Select Products and Services and then Ratings.
Choose Standard & Poor's Views On The Subprime Mortgage Market and scroll down to Structured Finance.
These CreditWatch actions affect 207 classes that had an original total balance of approximately $913.9. million, which represents 0.20% of the approximately $455.4 billion in U.S. RMBS backed by first-lien Alt-A collateral, rated by Standard & Poor's from the beginning of October 2005
through the end of December 2006. This is in addition to the ratings on 30 classes from 27 transactions from this period that were previously placed o
Correct me if I'm wrong, but "front ratio" should be simple to calculate if you have income data.
That's right, and when you deliver to those mean nasty GSEs, they make you send PITI, GMI, and other debts so that they can calculate ratios however they want to.
I have seen jillions of Alt-A whole loan bulk deal tapes pass my desk where all I got was DTI. A percentage. I didn't get the ingredients to calculate HTI. And I ran that shit through LEVELS, after I had made my own determination of what doc type goes with S&P's doc types.
I never used ResiLogic, but I'm betting that they got the same data LEVELS got.
"Impac focused on making "alt-a" loans, or loans to people with a decent credit history, but have difficulty documenting income, such as freelancers or small business owners. In a March filing, the company said 91 percent of the loans it transferred to its portfolio in 2006 were "alt-a" mortgages."
More inspiration to stop calling this a "subprime" problem.
In at least one aspect here, I must, with respect, disagree with you. I know absolutely nothing about the mortgage business, but I think some of the current problems are related to a too heavy reliance on what we read off a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet was put together with a variety of assumptions.
Kett82, I don't think we disagree at all about overreliance on the spreadsheets.
I'm just trying to help outsiders understand how elementary this is. I have the impression that if you're not an insider, you might not grasp this (why should you?).
I know tons of IT guys. They used to stand in the entrance to my cubicle and refuse to let me hide from them until I helped them with their problems, because they know what they don't know and they are not bozos.
So it really does look like its time to return to the Large Oak Desk style of lending, where the banker looks the borrower in the eye before giving up some of the bank's own money for the loan.
Too many people in back rooms, losing sight of what all this means in the real world.
I've often observed that the concern given to any problem can be measured as the inverse square of the distance to the problem. Getting people back face to face at least at the start of a major personal financial transaction seems to be prudent (there's that word again).
Anyone who has lived through periods of corporate "exuberance" knows the unpopularity of those who try to pull back the punch bowl.
I came to the conclusion, years ago as a bank Internal Auditor, that incentive programs for loan generation were a bad idea. It isn't that in theory the idea could be put in practice, but it is practically impossible to constrain those who have bonuses, commissions, etc on the line to be prudent. Ever seen a program where the bonus depended on loan quality? Me neither!
As to the data services, I would suspect that over time, they reached the conclusion that the industry would not sufficiently value the various debt to income ratios to be willing to pay the potentially higher subscription costs. Also, the bean counters probably figured it would cut into profits!
You have to know when convicted felons were closing on fraudulently appraised properties, and walking away with cash out (all the while being behind bars), that underwriting standards simply hadn't been abandoned, in some cases the lenders were colluding with borrowers.
Tanta, re your 10:04 comment. I think that's about it.
They didn't know, and were doing their best not to find out. It's real hard to run DTI when D is variable and I is "a-wishin' and a-hopin' ."
Because of their incompetence, lots of securities were sold where the risk was severely understated. Send a few to jail with some books on Mortgage 101. Parole when they can pass a competency test.
don't forget Fitch says they had the strictest CE requirements for Alt-A, and that's why they didn't rate all that many deals. u know what they say, garbage in, gold out. or something like that.
I was stunned to see that Fitch was apparently not paying any attention to DTI. That's a rookie mistake that can only be forgiven one time on the first day. After that, its back to the cell phone kiosk.
An accurate DTI isn't always easy to calculate at the origination level, but once its been done its one of the key drivers for underwriting and investment decisions. The calculation isn't rocket surgery, and it isn't always duck soup - but its a critical element.
If Stated Income loans were originated as they were originally intended (as relief from genuinely burdensome income documentation, not deal killing lack of income), then DTI has meaning in those few cases. However, as has been pointed out, DTI is meaningless in any liar loan folder.
We're not out of the woods yet, and I'm not sure we ever will be completely.
Mehl, "So, RE bubble/collapse, credit problems, fund blowups and fraud is only worth a 2 week 7% drop, of which 3% was gained back yesterday.
Is the worst over?"
No.
Not least because the RE bubble hasn't collapsed yet.
I think we're in the first of a three-stage slow motion whammy, and the reason it's slow is it's all tied to real estate and real estate is, at heart, a slow-motion process. (A house doesn't go through several hands a day every day -- usually.)
Whammy one is the realization that a lot of what's holding up the market has been artificial exuberance. It's been - so far - tied to the loans made to people who couldn't afford it and the speculators. It's beginning to dawn on people that the risk-loans (below AAA bonds) are inflated, and with loss of trust comes loss of money. We're also seeing the barn-door locked with tightening standards which effectively reduces credit, but that's not hitting us yet.
No, that starts to hit us in - I'm guessing - late November or December. That's when we see that peak of resets. And all the people who are looking for refi's -- who probably could have qualified for one of the risky loans a year ago -- can't get their new loans because the risky loans aren't there for them (and they can't qualify). And they start talking foreclosure and jingle-mail.
And that leads us, in about three months (March maybe April next year) to the third and worst whammy. That jingle and foreclosure process is no longer tentative but complete, and suddenly all those banks are carrying properties (expenses) instead of loans (receivables). And they're hoping - anticipating - unloading in the selling season which just started. But nobody's buying. They're not buying for two reasons. First, a lot of people now know there is an excess of inventory. Second, a lot of people who'd like to buy anyway can't because there's no credit -- second whammy magnified. It's around this point that the bank's stated values are insufficient to support the trades they've offered - the REALLY GOOD ones, the ones thought to be AAA.
It's almost nine months out. Smart companies can (and sill) start arranging now to minimize the pain. If enough companies are smart and are willing to take pain to reduce it later, then this will not be much more than the sort of thing we see now. If, however, they all insist on waiting to the last minute... we're screwed.
Caveat -- things like this recent Fitch announcement and the BoA deal in California may accelerate the whole thing, making business attempts to mitigate too little too late, but we'll just have to see.
You know what I like most about Calculated Risk Blog? I like that I have to look stuff up in Wikipedia daily to understand the conversation. Yesterday I had to look up Major Major Major Major from Catch 22, today I had to look up Balkan Sobranie, last week I was looking up the potted plant of the common man.
Fascinating.
Thanks for the education.
P.S.
The financial info is fun too, my friends and family are amazed at my pre-knowledge of events in the housing and financial markets.
dis........willfull ignorance is even worse than just flat being incompetent. This is akin to AHM reaffirming all is well a week before they file bankruptcy. The SEC will take a dim view of that statement and they should think of Fitch's "errors" along the same lines.
Perhaps the SEC understands the ramifications of the former but not the latter because they don't understand the mortgage industry any better than Fitch does.
Frankly, it just royally pisses me off when these folks, who were major contributors to the mess we are in now, are not called to task for their lack of let's say, common sense.
There's been lots of flags on the play - penalties need to be involked.
Tanta - I realize I may be the only mere mortal who visits this blog, but is there any way I could get you to spell out what all the acronisms(?) mean? I get DTI - debt to income. What's HTI? And by IT guys, do you mean the info tech guys??
Outsider, the list of things I don't understand would use up all the available hard drive space in the continental U.S. plus a couple of territories. That's why this isn't a blog about television, for instance.
HTI is so called because of "housing payment to income." Nobody could actually agree on that, though, which is where that "front ratio" thing came from. (On all the loan documents, back in the paper days, the ratios would be indicated as, say, 28/36. The one in front was housing or mortgage, depending on local custom, the one in back was DTI. So in our charming way, we all just started calling it "the front ratio" to get around the problem.
You will notice my reference to "data tape." It has been a very many years since any of us sent data to each other on magnetic tape (for use with our mainframes). But do we still call it "tape" now that it's mostly a spreadsheet? Yep. We do. We still call the yield on a bond a "coupon" even though there aren't many of these securities that issue physical certificates with coupons attached that you have to clip off and send in to get an interest payment.
Frankly, I'm shocked that any of us can spell "judgement."
God,I loved that PR release from Fitch!It brought to mind an afternoon in Yreka as a child,my dad was sipping bourbon and branch with his old saddle partner johnny solus,and johnny commented that someone "wouldn't have the sense to pour piss out of a boot if you printed the directions on the heel"
Tom, a former professor of mine, who hailed from the west, used to say in these cases, "My God. You can look into their eyes and see clear to Wyoming."
Chuck, that issue is addressed by choosing what we call the "qualifying payment." In other words, the payment used to calculate the DTI is not necessarily the actual starting note rate. The Interagency Nontraditional Mortgage Guidance addressed that issue when it required lenders to use the fully-amortizing payment for an IO (instead of just the interest-only payment) or a fully-indexed payment for an ARM (instead of the start rate).
God this posts takes me back to when my husband and I got our first mortgage (1987) and all the hoop jumping we had to do because he was self-employed and they were loathe to believe his Schedule C figures.
Those ratio's were beautiful things, simple and transparent and (nearly) impossible for anyone to F.U.
What's sad here is that these people at Fitch (who face it, are just people) couldn't call bullsh** on this because they knew it was wrong, in other words "doing the right thing" would have gotten them quizzical looks (or worse) from the PTB at the rating agencies.
In the Holodeck, there have always been basic credit risk standards.
Computer models...gotta love em!
Of course, the IT guys could have asked a "Tanta" to look em over beforehand...but no...too busy writing project plans to do that.
BTW, I am letting my personal bitter experience with IT and computer models to seep into our gentle discourse here.
Regards,
This seems a lot more like CYA to me than a blithe admission of incompetence. Unfortunately for Fitch, I can still smell the A. I'm also getting a whiff of potentially actionable lack of diligence...
Of course, the IT guys could have asked a "Tanta" to look em over beforehand
Tanta has spent so many hours of her life with her buddies in IT writing the "database dictionary," and with her buddies on the trading floor consulting over "tape cracking," that she has enough merit badges to cover two girl scout sashes.
I know tons of IT guys. They used to stand in the entrance to my cubicle and refuse to let me hide from them until I helped them with their problems, because they know what they don't know and they are not bozos.
This Fitch thing is willful ignorance.
Poor little digital boxes. Having garbage crammed down their throats akin to a goose targeted for foie gras, regurgitating said garbage in an entirely unexpected manner, and then getting blamed for the mess on the carpet.
I sensed bursting blood vessels yesterday when you commented about this.
From my reading of this, Fitch was purposely unclear about what criteria they were using before. Correct me if I'm wrong, but "front ratio" should be simple to calculate if you have income data. AFAICT, Fitch was using a simple front ratio value when there was I data available, and some bogus less-than-50% value when no I was stated. Now they're going to a back ratio value (with a 50% DTI on the front end when no income data is available).
This should have a huge impact on the predicted performance of these loans.
Imagine giving the task of underwriting to a 6th grader with only a basic math background and a five minute talk on what a mortgage is. They'd still do a better job than Fitch.
It is just almost unbelievable that they Fitch would put on paper just how patently incompetent their methods were.
One moment....let me get this straight. The reason they didn't downgrade a lot of this stuff earlier, was, I think I recall, that they weren't using much in the way of forward looking info.
Doesn't this change pretty much guarantee a massive downgrade coming up real soon?
*S&P Puts 207 U.S. Alt-A RMBS Classes On CreditWatch Negative Page 1/14
NEW YORK (Standard & Poor's) Aug. 7, 2007--Standard & Poor's Ratings Services today placed its ratings on 207 classes of U.S. residential mortgage-backed
securities (RMBS) backed by U.S. first-lien Alternative A (Alt-A) mortgage collateral issued from the beginning of October 2005 through the end of December 2006 on CreditWatch with negative implications.
The complete ratings list is included in "U.S. Alt-A RMBS Classes Affected By Aug. 7, 2007, CreditWatch Actions," available on RatingsDirect, the real-time Web-based source for Standard & Poor's credit ratings, research, and risk
analysis. The list can also be found on Standard & Poor's Web site at http://www.standardandpoors.com Select Products and Services and then Ratings.
Choose Standard & Poor's Views On The Subprime Mortgage Market and scroll down to Structured Finance.
These CreditWatch actions affect 207 classes that had an original total balance of approximately $913.9. million, which represents 0.20% of the approximately $455.4 billion in U.S. RMBS backed by first-lien Alt-A collateral, rated by Standard & Poor's from the beginning of October 2005
through the end of December 2006. This is in addition to the ratings on 30 classes from 27 transactions from this period that were previously placed o
Correct me if I'm wrong, but "front ratio" should be simple to calculate if you have income data.
That's right, and when you deliver to those mean nasty GSEs, they make you send PITI, GMI, and other debts so that they can calculate ratios however they want to.
I have seen jillions of Alt-A whole loan bulk deal tapes pass my desk where all I got was DTI. A percentage. I didn't get the ingredients to calculate HTI. And I ran that shit through LEVELS, after I had made my own determination of what doc type goes with S&P's doc types.
I never used ResiLogic, but I'm betting that they got the same data LEVELS got.
So, RE bubble/collapse, credit problems, fund blowups and fraud is only worth a 2 week 7% drop, of which 3% was gained back yesterday.
Is the worst over?
"Impac focused on making "alt-a" loans, or loans to people with a decent credit history, but have difficulty documenting income, such as freelancers or small business owners. In a March filing, the company said 91 percent of the loans it transferred to its portfolio in 2006 were "alt-a" mortgages."
More inspiration to stop calling this a "subprime" problem.
Dear Tanta
In at least one aspect here, I must, with respect, disagree with you. I know absolutely nothing about the mortgage business, but I think some of the current problems are related to a too heavy reliance on what we read off a spreadsheet. That spreadsheet was put together with a variety of assumptions.
As always, best regards,
How could you have any rating on a NO DOC loan, the idea is extreme. No wonder credit markets are cold.
Kett82, I don't think we disagree at all about overreliance on the spreadsheets.
I'm just trying to help outsiders understand how elementary this is. I have the impression that if you're not an insider, you might not grasp this (why should you?).
I know tons of IT guys. They used to stand in the entrance to my cubicle and refuse to let me hide from them until I helped them with their problems, because they know what they don't know and they are not bozos.
uh, huh ...they were there for problems.... ok
*S&P Puts 207 U.S. Alt-A RMBS Classes On CreditWatch Negative
The profit motive trumps all other reasoning. Nothing "new" to see here, move along.
So it really does look like its time to return to the Large Oak Desk style of lending, where the banker looks the borrower in the eye before giving up some of the bank's own money for the loan.
Too many people in back rooms, losing sight of what all this means in the real world.
I've often observed that the concern given to any problem can be measured as the inverse square of the distance to the problem. Getting people back face to face at least at the start of a major personal financial transaction seems to be prudent (there's that word again).
Anyone who has lived through periods of corporate "exuberance" knows the unpopularity of those who try to pull back the punch bowl.
I came to the conclusion, years ago as a bank Internal Auditor, that incentive programs for loan generation were a bad idea. It isn't that in theory the idea could be put in practice, but it is practically impossible to constrain those who have bonuses, commissions, etc on the line to be prudent. Ever seen a program where the bonus depended on loan quality? Me neither!
As to the data services, I would suspect that over time, they reached the conclusion that the industry would not sufficiently value the various debt to income ratios to be willing to pay the potentially higher subscription costs. Also, the bean counters probably figured it would cut into profits!
You have to know when convicted felons were closing on fraudulently appraised properties, and walking away with cash out (all the while being behind bars), that underwriting standards simply hadn't been abandoned, in some cases the lenders were colluding with borrowers.
Tanta, re your 10:04 comment. I think that's about it.
They didn't know, and were doing their best not to find out. It's real hard to run DTI when D is variable and I is "a-wishin' and a-hopin' ."
1375 SP tgt, before sep op ex, one print, any print
I just don't see how we can't test that before any higher prints are made...
Because of their incompetence, lots of securities were sold where the risk was severely understated. Send a few to jail with some books on Mortgage 101. Parole when they can pass a competency test.
S&P takes down alt-a...i have no link for u...
I don't know if I agree if it is their incompetence JR in Big D.
I lean more to Tanta's assessment of willful ignorance. Which is actually worse than incompetence in my book
don't forget Fitch says they had the strictest CE requirements for Alt-A, and that's why they didn't rate all that many deals. u know what they say, garbage in, gold out. or something like that.
I was stunned to see that Fitch was apparently not paying any attention to DTI. That's a rookie mistake that can only be forgiven one time on the first day. After that, its back to the cell phone kiosk.
An accurate DTI isn't always easy to calculate at the origination level, but once its been done its one of the key drivers for underwriting and investment decisions. The calculation isn't rocket surgery, and it isn't always duck soup - but its a critical element.
If Stated Income loans were originated as they were originally intended (as relief from genuinely burdensome income documentation, not deal killing lack of income), then DTI has meaning in those few cases. However, as has been pointed out, DTI is meaningless in any liar loan folder.
We're not out of the woods yet, and I'm not sure we ever will be completely.
Mehl, "So, RE bubble/collapse, credit problems, fund blowups and fraud is only worth a 2 week 7% drop, of which 3% was gained back yesterday.
Is the worst over?"
No.
Not least because the RE bubble hasn't collapsed yet.
I think we're in the first of a three-stage slow motion whammy, and the reason it's slow is it's all tied to real estate and real estate is, at heart, a slow-motion process. (A house doesn't go through several hands a day every day -- usually.)
Whammy one is the realization that a lot of what's holding up the market has been artificial exuberance. It's been - so far - tied to the loans made to people who couldn't afford it and the speculators. It's beginning to dawn on people that the risk-loans (below AAA bonds) are inflated, and with loss of trust comes loss of money. We're also seeing the barn-door locked with tightening standards which effectively reduces credit, but that's not hitting us yet.
No, that starts to hit us in - I'm guessing - late November or December. That's when we see that peak of resets. And all the people who are looking for refi's -- who probably could have qualified for one of the risky loans a year ago -- can't get their new loans because the risky loans aren't there for them (and they can't qualify). And they start talking foreclosure and jingle-mail.
And that leads us, in about three months (March maybe April next year) to the third and worst whammy. That jingle and foreclosure process is no longer tentative but complete, and suddenly all those banks are carrying properties (expenses) instead of loans (receivables). And they're hoping - anticipating - unloading in the selling season which just started. But nobody's buying. They're not buying for two reasons. First, a lot of people now know there is an excess of inventory. Second, a lot of people who'd like to buy anyway can't because there's no credit -- second whammy magnified. It's around this point that the bank's stated values are insufficient to support the trades they've offered - the REALLY GOOD ones, the ones thought to be AAA.
It's almost nine months out. Smart companies can (and sill) start arranging now to minimize the pain. If enough companies are smart and are willing to take pain to reduce it later, then this will not be much more than the sort of thing we see now. If, however, they all insist on waiting to the last minute... we're screwed.
Caveat -- things like this recent Fitch announcement and the BoA deal in California may accelerate the whole thing, making business attempts to mitigate too little too late, but we'll just have to see.
You know what I like most about Calculated Risk Blog? I like that I have to look stuff up in Wikipedia daily to understand the conversation. Yesterday I had to look up Major Major Major Major from Catch 22, today I had to look up Balkan Sobranie, last week I was looking up the potted plant of the common man.
Fascinating.
Thanks for the education.
P.S.
The financial info is fun too, my friends and family are amazed at my pre-knowledge of events in the housing and financial markets.
dis........willfull ignorance is even worse than just flat being incompetent. This is akin to AHM reaffirming all is well a week before they file bankruptcy. The SEC will take a dim view of that statement and they should think of Fitch's "errors" along the same lines.
Perhaps the SEC understands the ramifications of the former but not the latter because they don't understand the mortgage industry any better than Fitch does.
Frankly, it just royally pisses me off when these folks, who were major contributors to the mess we are in now, are not called to task for their lack of let's say, common sense.
There's been lots of flags on the play - penalties need to be involked.
Tanta - I realize I may be the only mere mortal who visits this blog, but is there any way I could get you to spell out what all the acronisms(?) mean? I get DTI - debt to income. What's HTI? And by IT guys, do you mean the info tech guys??
Is there anything you don't know?
Outsider, the list of things I don't understand would use up all the available hard drive space in the continental U.S. plus a couple of territories. That's why this isn't a blog about television, for instance.
HTI is so called because of "housing payment to income." Nobody could actually agree on that, though, which is where that "front ratio" thing came from. (On all the loan documents, back in the paper days, the ratios would be indicated as, say, 28/36. The one in front was housing or mortgage, depending on local custom, the one in back was DTI. So in our charming way, we all just started calling it "the front ratio" to get around the problem.
You will notice my reference to "data tape." It has been a very many years since any of us sent data to each other on magnetic tape (for use with our mainframes). But do we still call it "tape" now that it's mostly a spreadsheet? Yep. We do. We still call the yield on a bond a "coupon" even though there aren't many of these securities that issue physical certificates with coupons attached that you have to clip off and send in to get an interest payment.
Frankly, I'm shocked that any of us can spell "judgement."
God,I loved that PR release from Fitch!It brought to mind an afternoon in Yreka as a child,my dad was sipping bourbon and branch with his old saddle partner johnny solus,and johnny commented that someone "wouldn't have the sense to pour piss out of a boot if you printed the directions on the heel"
Tom, a former professor of mine, who hailed from the west, used to say in these cases, "My God. You can look into their eyes and see clear to Wyoming."
I said it before and I'll say it again
Fitch runs third in a two horse race.
Is there a mechanism to distinguish between DTI during teaser-payment period, and DTI during amortizing-payment period?
Balloon loans have been around for a long time.
Chuck, that issue is addressed by choosing what we call the "qualifying payment." In other words, the payment used to calculate the DTI is not necessarily the actual starting note rate. The Interagency Nontraditional Mortgage Guidance addressed that issue when it required lenders to use the fully-amortizing payment for an IO (instead of just the interest-only payment) or a fully-indexed payment for an ARM (instead of the start rate).
"Finance classes is where I caught up with my sleep" IT Guy
"I thought the risk factors were already programed into the chip set" Finance Guy
God this posts takes me back to when my husband and I got our first mortgage (1987) and all the hoop jumping we had to do because he was self-employed and they were loathe to believe his Schedule C figures.
Those ratio's were beautiful things, simple and transparent and (nearly) impossible for anyone to F.U.
What's sad here is that these people at Fitch (who face it, are just people) couldn't call bullsh** on this because they knew it was wrong, in other words "doing the right thing" would have gotten them quizzical looks (or worse) from the PTB at the rating agencies.
"uh, huh ...they were there for problems.... ok
EvidenceTantaIsASmokingHotty | 08.07.07 - 11:01 am | # "
This guy will not give it up! (but he makes me laugh every time I read his handle.)
PS (It is beyond me how you guys get anything done with your "preoccupations").