Ancora un po' di incentivi, please. I rating dei CDOs: sbagliati per caso?

Su Seekingalpha Brad De Long difende con caparbietà la necessità di nuovi incentivi per l'economia USA contro i fautori dell'austerità di bilancio fin da subito.

Vi segnalo da Econotwist un post al vetriolo dedicato al rapporto preliminare della commissione del congresso USA sulla crisi finanziaria: se non vi basta il titolo del post How To Create A 3 Trillion Dollar Bubble And Burst It  eccovi un assaggio dei contenuti che chiamano in cause senza mezzi termini le agenzie di rating:

The U.S. Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission have released a preliminary report on its findings after investigating the rating agencies role in the financial crisis.  Inflated initial ratings, and later rapid  
downgrades, on mortgage-related securities by the agencies have contributed to the financial crises through a number of channels, the commission concludes.
“In total, $2.5 trillion worth of RMBS and $564 billion worth of CDOs have been downgraded since January 2007.” 
In other words; the rating agencies have erased more than 3 trillion dollars from investors accounts by correcting their own initial mistakes, triggering the biggest financial crisis since the 1930′s. The preliminary report explains what happened and how, but leaves the questions on why open to more speculations. (...)

Stupidity Or Manipulation?

There are only two possible explanations for the rating agencies handling of the credit derivatives:
1. They had no clue what so ever about what they were doing.
Or
2. They purposely tried to manipulate the market.
The commission don’t make any conclusive statements at this point, but the last word have definitely not been said in this matter.
But its beyond doubt that the rating mess was one of the main triggers behind today’s the financial crisis.