Now I want to talk about rating agencies. As an alternative to trusting an investment banker, you can trust a rating agency. And so, what is a rating agency? It's an agency that publishes its information instead of keeping it secret for their favored clients. So, the first beginnings of a rating agency were by a book written by Henry Varnum Poor, published in 1860 called "History of Railways and Canals in the United States." But it was more than a history, it wasn't a history book for history buffs. It was focused on companies and what their situation was. That was the beginning. That later led to Standard and Poor's corporation. Poor's in 1916 merged with Standard Statistics to form Standard and Poor's long after Henry Varnum Poor. But John L. Moody founded the first true rating agency called Moody's Investor Services in 1909. And he decided to give better grades like it's college. Now, already colleges were doing this grading system A B C D grading system, so he thought people would understand that. He's going to grade companies for their integrity and ability to come through for you. And the best rating he gave was not A plus, it was AAA, triple-A. And then there were there was B's, C's, Ds and bad ratings as well. In his 1933 book, "The Long Road Home," Moody, I think maybe I said something about this, describes his moral mission. He said, "I always, like any other young person, wanted to become a millionaire some day," but he said, "you know, I had other impulses, as well. And one of my impulses was to tell the truth and tell everybody I don't feel like someone who should keep secrets. I wanted to publish it and get it out there and those bastards who were playing tricks, they'll be exposed everywhere." So he sold books; Moody's Investor manuals, describing every major company and what he thought of them. He loved to do it because he likes to criticize. Yeah, so he likes to- likes to do that thing. And it was a huge success and it remains so today. Originally, they would not accept money from the people they rated. That broke down- Moody's said that as a principle, you read it. Well, it's just like could I as a professor accept cash from you- that you would hand me money and then that might be a bribe to raise your grade? Of course, that's obviously unethical. But rating agencies, should be the same for rating agencies. Right? But that broke down in the 1970s when rating agencies found it difficult to keep up with all of the complicated securities that were being issued. And they started charging for it. It got really crazy with the mortgage securities, it took so many different forms and they're so complicated. So the rating agencies said they had to charge for it and then it turned out to be a great business. Rating agencies which were never big profit centres, started getting involved in all the complicated new derivatives finance. And we're making a lot of money. So, it was hard to- so those of us who came with me to see the big short will remember the scene when Steve Carroll, the actor goes into a rating agency and talks to a woman and then asks her who's the manager of a department there, and asked her, "what do you know about the underlying mortgages behind the security?" And she admits, "nothing." And then he said, "well, why did you give it a rating?" And then she said, "well, if we don't, our competitors will." So, that was an outrageous thing to say. You saw it in the movie. Whether it actually happened, I don't know. I wasn't there at that meeting but I heard things like that in the early 2000s. That the rating agencies were getting casual. So, the rating agencies have improved their act substantially because of new regulations and their loss of reputation. So, there's now more care in- they still accept money for ratings because their business kind of requires that now.
