The US Securities and Exchange Commission's report on the investigation into the faulty ratings done by credit rating agencies "" Standard & Poor's, Moody's and Fitch "" is full of details of just how raters cut corners and tweaked their models substantially in order to make the ratings look good for clients that paid for them (http://www.sec.gov/news/studies/2008/ craexamination070808.pdf). Indeed, given how the business was growing, by anywhere between 600 and 900 per cent per year in comparison with 2002, it was hardly surprising that the rating firms goofed so badly. One of the three rating firms, the SEC found, didn't even bother to hire additional staffers to help study the complex financial products it was certifying as kosher "" the problem was less true of the subprime Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities (RMBS) but was very serious in the case of Collateralised Debt Obligations (CDOs) linked to these RMBS. Another rating firm, and the SEC doesn't say which one it was, was scrambling to increase the number of staffers, by over 100 per cent since 2002 (the report doesn't say how qualified the new staff were, but maintaining quality while expanding at a scorching pace would be an uphill task) "" but even this was woefully inadequate given that business was rising a lot faster.