Hacker News Reader

Exactly what good did Moody’s do with 2008 and SVB?

Moody, Standard & Poors and Fitch are RATING agencies.

RATING agencies are different from AUDITING companies different from CONSULTANCIES.

Rating agencies were somewhat restructured after 2008 (but are still kind of edgy) - because they did literally write AAA on a piece of paper for money. But there ratings were opinions and had no real legal meaning.

I was about to say aren't there only 4 auditing agencies in the entire US after the fifth fucking imploded after the Enron scandal due to their reputation being tarnished?

No, there are more. But auditing an S&P500 corporation is pretty complex. I am not in the auditing S&P 500 corporation business and it looks like there may be six - but the Big4 literally seem to do 491/497 companies. I’m not sure I am too concerned about the auditing quality of the Big4 tbh though…

Enron’s problem was the “consulting AND auditing” mess with conflict of interest if I am not mistaken.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com