Futures fell from a 33-month high as Standard & Poor’s said there’s a “material risk” that U.S. policy makers may not agree on a plan to address long-term budget issues by 2013.

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Standard and Poors and Moody's are private firms.

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Griftopia

The major credit rating agencies repeatedly sold out to Wall Street banks, so addicted to short-term profits that they sacrificed the accuracy of their reports to maintain a competitive edge, a two-year government investigation has concluded.



Rather than assess risk accurately, two major rating agencies sold their top seals of approval to their investment bank clients, blessing products that the agencies themselves knew to be undeserving, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations concluded in a report released Wednesday. By repeatedly debasing their standards, these agencies helped banks sell shoddy securities to unsuspecting investors, inflating the value of assets that turned out to be worth far less, the report has found.

People who worked at S&P and Moody's during this time described a situation in which the companies' independence eroded almost entirely, so that they perpetually granted the wishes of banks that requested high ratings.

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