by Linda Beale S&P faces civil charges for mortgage bond ratings The Justice Department’s efforts to reach a settlement with Standard & Poor’s Rating Services about the ratings provided to mortgage bonds leading up to the financial crisis have failed, and it appears that civil charges will be filed by the Justice Department and state […]

Historian Mary Beard comments on the history of Why the rich look down on the poor. You know, the poor tend to snort a lot and live under awnings!

Simon Johnson comments on Standard and Poor’s irrational ratings: Standard & Poor’s downgrade of United States government debt last month has been much debated, but not enough attention has been devoted to the fact, reported last week by Bloomberg News, that it continues to rate securities based on subprime mortgages as AAA. In short, S.&P. […]

by Mike Kimel The Historical Relationship Between the S&P 500 and the Economy, Part 2: The Abrupt Rise of Short Term Investing Last week I had a post looking at how long it takes for events in the economy (in the guise of real GDP) to affect the stock market (represented by the S&P 500), […]