GREAT NEWS!!!

The ratings agencies have a LOT to atone for and I hope this is a good start. The case law doesn't seem encouraging but we do have incriminatory evidence.

Calpers Sues Over Ratings of Securities
By LESLIE WAYNE
Published: July 14, 2009
New York Times

SACRAMENTO — The nation’s largest public pension fund has filed suit in California state court in connection with $1 billion in losses that it says were caused by “wildly inaccurate” credit ratings from the three leading ratings agencies.


The lawsuit, filed late last week in California Superior Court in San Francisco, is focused on a form of debt called structured investment vehicles, highly complex packages of securities made up of a variety of assets, including subprime mortgages. Calpers bought $1.3 billion of them in 2006; they collapsed in 2007 and 2008.

Calpers maintains that in giving these packages of securities the agencies’ highest credit rating, the three top ratings agencies — Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch — “made negligent misrepresentation” to the pension fund, which provides retirement benefits to 1.6 million public employees in California.