Rating Agencies Quotes

why the rating agencies weren't more critical of bonds underpinned by floating-rate subprime mortgages. Subprime borrowers tended to be one broken refrigerator away from default. Few, if any, should be running the risk of their interest payment spiking up. As most of these loans were structured, however, the homeowner would pay a fixed teaser rate of, say, 8 percent for the first two years, and then, at the start of the third year, the interest rate would skyrocket to, say, 12 percent, and thereafter it would float at permanently high levels. ~ Michael Lewis

Today, credit rating agencies rate companies, countries and bonds. ~ Mike Fitzpatrick

We have new rules that give shareholders the ability to vote on executive compensation. We have new rules for asset-backed securities. We have new rules around credit rating agencies. ~ Mary Schapiro

The triple-A tranches all traded at one price, the triple-B tranches all traded at another, even though there were important differences from one triple-B tranche to another. As the bonds were all priced off the Moody's rating, the most overpriced bonds were the bonds that had been most ineptly rated. And the bonds that had been most ineptly rated were the bonds that Wall Street firms had tricked the rating agencies into rating most ineptly. "I cannot fucking believe this is allowed," said Eisman. ~ Michael Lewis

We're only one of a few states that have maintained our Triple-A bond rating from the major rating agencies. ~ Bob Holden

How Wall Street investment banks somehow had conned the rating agencies into blessing piles of crappy loans; how this had enabled the lending of trillions of dollars to ordinary Americans; how the ordinary Americans had happily complied and told the lies they needed to tell to obtain the loans; how the machinery that turned the loans into supposedly riskless securities was so complicated that investors had ceased to evaluate risks; how the problem had grown so big that the end was bound to be cataclysmic and have big social and political consequences. ~ Michael Lewis

Minnesotans lost their jobs because the credit rating agencies didn't do the only job they're supposed to have, the only job they had, which is to give accurate, objective ratings to financial products. ~ Al Franken

No one doing big business can avoid some contact with government agencies, regulators, and policy makers. ~ Mikhail Prokhorov

When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night's sleep for the chance of extra profits. ~ Warren Buffett

I believe Korea is making the best movies. Only in Korea - you can do whatever you want to without any rating system or whatever. They can make world-class karate movies and make lots of money, which is very important. ~ Ryuhei Kitamura

It is estimated that up to one third of police officers who face a traumatic event will develop some level of post-traumatic stress (Dowling F.G., 2006). Despite this high number of psychological casualties, law enforcement agencies nationwide fail to support and train for a psychological injury that can last far longer than the physical injuries received in combat (Blum, 2001). ~ Karen Rodwill Solomon

I can remember the first face-lift show that came on. I rang up everyone - are you watching? I'm watching. ~ Jennifer Saunders

My Dad always told me that casting agencies are like artists picturing their paintings in their mind. They know what they want for a role and not to take it too seriously [if I dont get the part]. ~ Miley Cyrus

We estimate that humanitarian agencies have access to about 350,000 vulnerable people in Darfur - only about one third of the estimated total population in need. ~ Jan Egeland

[T]he important thing was that each Saturday they must win games and put The Academy on the sporting pages. For that, after all, was the final index to the rating of an American school. ~ John Horne Burns

I never personally name anyone. I am not comfortable rating other drivers. ~ Mario Andretti

I have made it a rule for a long time, not to part with the copyright of my drawings, for I have been so copied, my drawings reproduced and sold for advertisements and done in ways I hate. ~ Kate Greenaway

The L.A. Times reports that al Qaeda terrorists have been traced to Iran, and President Bush is talking tough. In fact he said he will attack the minute he has evidence his approval rating is under 45 percent. ~ Jay Leno

Anyone who knows Western businesses, government agencies, or educational institutions knows that their managers make far too many small decisions as a rule. And nothing causes as much trouble in an organization as a lot of small decisions. ~ Peter F. Drucker

Many, if not most, of the difficulties we experience in dealing with government agencies arise from the agencies being part of a fragmented and open political system ... The central feature of the American constitutional system - the separation of powers - exacerbates many of these problems. The governments of the US were not designed to be efficient or powerful, but to be tolerable and malleable. Those who designed these arrangements always assumed that the federal government would exercise few and limited powers. ~ James Q. Wilson

We've been looking in all of the wrong places for help in fighting this battle for reconciliation. We've sought help from social service agencies and government programs. But this is something that requires divine power. ~ John M. Perkins

According to today's Los Angeles Times, Gray Davis now gets negative job ratings from white people, black people, Latinos, Republicans, Independents and even Democrats. Say what you want about the guy but he's a uniter! ~ Jay Leno

accommodate, within reason, the religious practices of workers and applicants unless they impose an "undue hardship" on the business. It is the latest in a line of Supreme Court cases that have elevated religious rights over secular interests, whether exercised by powerful corporations, government agencies or prison inmates. The majority opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia stressed two points that outline the role religion can have in the workplace. Employers must do more than handle religious practices in the same way they do secular ones, he wrote, because federal law gives faith-related expression "favored treatment, affirmatively obligating employers" to accommodate things they could otherwise refuse. Moreover, he wrote, an applicant or employee alleging religious discrimination doesn't have to prove the employer was motivated by bias. ~ Anonymous

The financial crisis was a classic case of the political class failing the American people. Twenty-five agencies were supposed to be minding the store during the financial crisis and every one of them was asleep at the switch. ~ Carly Fiorina

Ironically, the possibility that the president dodged his military service has increased his approval ratings with Democrats by 80 percent. ~ Craig Kilborn

To restate an old law - when a man bites a fish, that's good, but when a fish bites a man, that's bad. This is one way of saying it's all right if man kills an animal, but if an animal attacks man, the act is reprehensible. The animal is labelled "killer," something to be feared, hated, shunned, punished, even killed by man.

How dangerous are those sea animals with bad reputations? A few actually kill. A few maim. Some are poisonous when eaten by man. Most sting, stab,or poison and cause mild to severe discomfort to man. Yet man is one of the larger beings that sea creatures encounter, and these poisons usually can't kill him. Very often these poisons are used defensively against predators and offensively in food gathering.

There are a few animals that have won themselves a bad reputation even though they have little or no effect on man. They have won their rating through man's interpretation of their attitude towards lower animals. These animals have been seen feeding in what appears to be a savage manner. But this behavior may perhaps be comparable to a man tearing the flesh off a chicken leg with his teeth. ~ Jacques-Yves Cousteau

The SEC got more than 100 rules to write under Dodd-Frank, the lion's share of all the agencies. And we've moved, I think, with a tremendous sense of urgency. But it takes a long time to write rules and get them approved by a five-member commission. ~ Mary Schapiro

Regulation has gone astray ... Either because they have become captives of regulated industries or captains of outmoded administrative agencies, regulators all too often encourage or approve unreasonably high prices, inadequate service, and anticompetitive behavior. The cost of this regulation is always passed on to the consumer. And that cost is astronomical. ~ Edward Kennedy

Everything is rated.maintain high rating in life ~ Ikechukwu Joseph

Anyone can contribute images, and we sell them to designers and agencies all over the world. ~ Jon Oringer

Today, we are announcing that agencies are releasing their final regulatory reform plans, including hundreds of initiatives that will reduce costs, simplify the system, and eliminate redundancy and inconsistency. ~ Cass Sunstein

When you look at a Congress that has an 84 percent disapproval rating, that means that for the most part, the people of this country, and certainly California, are looking for new leadership. ~ Elizabeth Emken

In our first season we had a 22 rating. Today Seinfeld, a hit show, gets a 15. Lost in Space actually had a bigger audience than Star Trek got at that time. ~ Mark Goddard

One would think that the record of already existing regulatory agencies is sufficiently eloquent in showing that it is Big Business that does the regulating rather than vice versa . ~ Paul A. Baran

When the Goldman Sachs saleswoman called Mike Burry and told him that her firm would be happy to sell him credit default swaps in $100 million chunks, Burry guessed, rightly, that Goldman wasn't ultimately on the other side of his bets. Goldman would never be so stupid as to make huge naked bets that millions of insolvent Americans would repay their home loans. He didn't know who, or why, or how much, but he knew that some giant corporate entity with a triple-A rating was out there selling credit default swaps on subprime mortgage bonds. Only a triple-A-rated corporation could assume such risk, no money down, and no questions asked. Burry was right about this, too, but it would be three years before he knew it. The party on the other side of his bet against subprime mortgage bonds was the triple-A-rated insurance company AIG - American International Group, Inc. ~ Michael Lewis

Experts say that Britain and France have strong spy agencies; Germany's is competent but afraid to level with its public; the rest are relatively weak, and there is no Europe-wide spy agency. ~ David Ignatius

You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk. ~ Edward Snowden

I spent seven months in Africa and came back saying there isn't anything you can say about black people that you couldn't say about, say, pink people except that they're black. ~ Larry Rivers

Subliminal perception is a subject that virtually no one wants to believe exists, and
if it does exist
they much less believe that it has any practical application ... The techniques are in widespread use by media, advertising and public relations agencies, industrial and commercial corporations, and by the Federal government itself. ~ Wilson Bryan Key

Are you attracted by his new ideas or his new poll ratings? ~ Pat Buchanan

Yet in recent years I have witnessed a new phenomenon among filmgoers, especially those considered intelligent and perceptive. I have a name for this phenomenon: the Instant White-out. People are closeted in cozy darkness; they turn off their mobile phones and willingly give themselves, for ninety minutes or two hours, to a new film that got a fourstar rating in the newspaper. They follow the pictures and the plot, understand what is spoken either in the original tongue or via dubbing or subtitles, enjoy lush locations and clever scenes, and even if they find the story superficial or preposterous, it is not enough to pry them from their seats and make them leave the theatre in the middle of the show.
But something strange happens. After a short while, a week or two, sometimes even less, the film is whitened out, erased, as if it never happened. They can't remember its name, or who the actors were, or the plot. The movie fades into the darkness of the movie house, and what remains is at most a ticket stub left accidentally in one's pocket. ~ A.B. Yehoshua

ever since that time of unbound paranoia the one unbreakable law of the British secret services has been: Thou shalt not snoop on Number Ten. Because we are not in the business of generating policy - it's not a task for which agencies like ours are suited, and in those countries where spooks set policy, it always ends in tears. We vet politicians on the way up - that's an entirely different matter - but by the time they're moving into Number Ten they should already be above suspicion; if they aren't, we haven't been doing our job properly. And ~ Charles Stross

A significant number of people believe tribal people still live and dress as they did 300 years ago. During my tenure as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, national news agencies requesting interviews sometimes asked if they could film a tribal dance or if I would wear traditional tribal clothing for the interview. I doubt they asked the president of the United States to dress like a pilgrim for an interview. ~ Wilma Mankiller

We intend to keep the lines of communication open with the Defense Department so we can help our border law enforcement agencies navigate the equipment application process. ~ Henry Cuellar

They say sound is vibration and it got my mind shaking/ Can you feel it vibrating? I call it Vibe Ratings ~ Capital STEEZ

In real markets, agents make bad choices. They are often ignorant, misinformed, and irrational. Yet, markets tend to punish agents for making bad choices, and they tend to learn from their mistakes. For instance, if you fail to pay your bills, your credit rating declines and you have a harder time getting loans. If you fail to do research and buy an unreliable car, you suffer from repair bills. In contrast, when people in government make bad choices, the political process almost never punishes them. Studies show that voters are terrible at retrospective voting - they do not know whom to blame for bad government - and so politicians are not punished for making bad choices. ~ Jason Brennan

No no there wasn't any planned 14th season, we all saw the writing on the wall. The ratings had been going down and so fourth, that curve goes on every show and in everybody's life. ~ Larry Hagman

In the Solar System, Enceladus ought to be one of the highest priorities for the world's space agencies. Enceladus has a source of energy (tidal heating), organic material, and liquid water. That's a textbook-like list of those properties needed for life. Moreover, nature has provided astrobiologists with the ultimate free lunch: jets that spurt Enceladus's organic material into space. ~ David C. Catling

When we start fighting crime by any means necessary we become guilty of the same hypocrisy as law enforcement agencies throughout history, [which] break the rules to get the villains, and [in doing] so become villains themselves. ~ Barrett Brown

There is an uncomfortable willingness among privacy campaigners to discriminate against mass surveillance conducted by the state to the exclusion of similar surveillance conducted for profit by large corporations. Partially, this is a vestigial ethic from the Californian libertarian origins of online pro-privacy campaigning. Partially, it is a symptom of the superior public relations enjoyed by Silicon Valley technology corporations, and the fact that those corporations also provide the bulk of private funding for the flagship digital privacy advocacy groups, leading to a conflict of interest.


At the individual level, many of even the most committed privacy campaigners have an unacknowledged addiction to easy-to-use, privacy-destroying amenities like Gmail, Facebook, and Apple products. As a result, privacy campaigners frequently overlook corporate surveillance abuses. When they do address the abuses of companies like Google, campaigners tend to appeal to the logic of the market, urging companies to make small concessions to user privacy in order to repair their approval ratings. There is the false assumption that market forces ensure that Silicon Valley is a natural government antagonist, and that it wants to be on the public's side - that profit-driven multinational corporations partake more of the spirit of democracy than government agencies.


Many privacy advocates justify a predominant focus on abuses by the state on the basis that th ~ Julian Assange

When there is a problem in the world, we say "What are they going to do about it". At which point they, who have secretly created the problem in the first place, respond to this demand by introducing a 'solution' - more centralisation of power and erosion of freedom. If you want to give more powers to the police, security agencies and military, and you want the public to demand you do it, then ensure there is more crime, violence and terrorism, and then it's a cinch to achieve your aims. Once the people are in fear of being burgled, mugged or bombed, they will demand that you take their freedom away to protect them from what they have been manipulated to fear….Create the problem, encourage the reaction "something must be done", and then offer the solution. It is summed up by the Freemason motto 'Ordo Ab Chao' -order out of chaos. Create the chaos and then offer the way to restore order. Your order. The masses are herded and directed by many and various forms of emotional and mental control. ~ David Icke

The largest and most rigorous study that is currently available in this area is the third one commissioned by the British Home Office (Kelly, Lovett, & Regan, 2005). The analysis was based on the 2,643 sexual assault cases (where the outcome was known) that were reported to British police over a 15-year period of time. Of these, 8% were classified by the police department as false reports. Yet the researchers noted that some of these classifications were based simply on the personal judgments of the police investigators, based on the victim's mental illness, inconsistent statements, drinking or drug use. These classifications were thus made in violation of the explicit policies of their own police agencies. There searchers therefore supplemented the information contained in the police files by collecting many different types of additional data, including: reports from forensic examiners, questionnaires completed by police investigators, interviews with victims and victim service providers, and content analyses of the statements made by victims and witnesses. They then proceeded to evaluate each case using the official criteria for establishing a false allegation, which was that there must be either "a clear and credible admission by the complainant" or "strong evidential grounds" (Kelly, Lovett, & Regan,2005). On the basis of this analysis, the percentage of false reports dropped to 2.5%."
Lonsway, Kimberly A., Joanne Archambault, and David Lisak. "False reports: ~ David Lisak

In the short walk between his aeroplane and reaching the outside world at Heathrow, Michael Bywater encountered no fewer than 93 separate notices telling him off for things he hadn't done or which hadn't even occurred to him to do. Being bossed and patronised are two sensations that most sophisticated adults would sooner do without and yet we are bossed and patronised, by the media, by politicians, by business, by advertising agencies and the public services, more now than at any other time in our history. Why should this be? ~ Alexander Waugh

The main weakness of competitiveness policy as currently practiced in Latin America is deficient implementation and lack of evaluation of programs, rooted in lack of coordination among state agencies. ~ Evelyne Huber

When you are harried, browbeaten, cajoled, bullied, pursued, threatened, bribed and surveyed by the state and its agencies, you have little inclination left over for obedience: least of all obedience to what one judge called the unenforceable. You have already paid your dues to society. Society can now look after itself. In the small sphere left to you, you will do exactly what you please, without regard to anyone else. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

The primary rocks, ... I regard as the deposits of a period in which the earth's crust had sufficiently cooled down to permit the existence of a sea, with the necessary denuding agencies,-waves and currents,-and, in consequence, of deposition also; but in which the internal heat acted so near the surface, that whatever was deposited came, matter of course, to be metamorphosed into semi-plutonic forms, that retained only the stratification. ~ Hugh Miller