Moody's to pay millions in fine to the US authorities

Rating agency Moody 's has been held responsible for the financial crisis. Standard & Poor's and Fitch are also considered guilty, but to a lesser extent. Their higher credit ratings were wrong, as it turned out later. Therefore, Moody's will now have to pay $ 864 million in fines.

As you know, the starting point of the crisis was the situation on the US housing market: banks transformed doubtful real estate loans into so-called structured securities and sold them. This game worked well because the credit rating agencies gave the wrong credit.

As securities finally plummeted in 2007 in value, investors lost billions of dollars. Banks went bankrupt or went out with taxpayer money, the world fell into a deep recession, millions of people lost their jobs.

S&P paid, then, a total of $ 1.4 billion to the state's Department of Justice. The company paid an additional $ 200 million to the California Pension Fund Calpers and the Securities and Exchange Commission.