A big hat tip to The Big Picture for this laugh of the day:
Standard & Poor’s cut some of its credit ratings on investment bank Bear Stearns Friday following news of the bank’s cash crisis and emergency bailout.
S&P cut its long-term counterparty rating on Bear Stearns to "BBB" from "A" and its short-term rating to "A-3" from "A-1."
S&P said Bear Stearns’ need for temporary financing to continue operating normally led to the downgrade. Earlier Friday, Bear Stearns said it is receiving a financing line from JPMorgan Chase that is secured by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The agency also placed the bank’s long- and short-term ratings on negative watch, meaning they could be downgraded in the next three months.
To Standard & Poor’s-
Gee, thanks for the heads up guys! You don’t suppose you are JUST A LITTLE LATE with this downgrade, do you?
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Pretty bad timing by S&P, coming one day after they proclaimed the finance sector fundamentally sound and said the end of the credit crisis was in sight.
Whoops!
NVMike-
Rating agencies don’t seem to like to downgrade until companies are DOA. I thought the point of a rating was to give you an idea of how a company could be expected to perform, but that seems to be a concept that has gone by the wayside.
No wonder the SEC is investigating the rating agencies.
Analysts have stopped giving bad ratings ever since that poor dude at Merrill got fired for trying to downgrade Enron.