Moody's computer 'bug' caused over-optimistic credit ratings

Moody's saw its shares slide on opening this morning, after reports that the institutional rating firm had blamed bugs in its computer model for leading it to grade several debt parcels as almost without risk for investors. The ratings firm announced a review of the way it changed its ratings methodology when the FT reported …

[Anonymous Coward]

If only the consumer credit agencies...

would get this bug, then maybe I'd qualify for a better rate on my mortgage....

[Schultz]

Ooops,

Good thing the computers only handle virtual money!

[Anonymous Coward]

@Ooops,

as virtual as the money in your bank account.

See, you feel better already.

Curious: how many billions were uprated incorrectly - does anyone know?

[John Imrie]

Excel

I wonder if they where using MS Excel to do the modeling. I hear that it has a few problems with its financial functions. See http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/05/fractured-yearfrac-and-discounted-disc.html

[Anonymous Coward]

Penny Arcade...

"The bomb says no, Brian."

[Stu]

Garbage In...

Gospel Out!! Gotta love it!

[heystoopid]

Moody's

Moody's are no better then or an improvement on Standard and Poor either for any type ratings and are basically the lazy man's way of doing things badly for the most part !

But then again , who looks a free gift horse in the mouth where the sun don't shine ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not surprised

I consulted at Moodys a couple of years ago and I'm not surprised at all. The people I worked with couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery. There was an entire floor of Indian sub-contractors and hundreds more in India. Individually there were some good people but there was no quality control or decent supervision in the US.

Our project was endlessly delayed and changed because there didn't appear to be anyone who wanted to make a decision of any kind. Everyone with a college degree appears to be a Vice-President or above but none of them are empowered to do anything. I decided at that point never to trust anything that the organization did ever again.

I'm surprised they are even able to produce ratings at all - I know their records management is completely out of compliance and other key systems were sometimes down for weeks on end.

[Graham Marsden]

ROTM?

Aw, poot, I thought this was an ROTM story with a teenaged AI which got a bit moody and decided to start messing around with people's credit records because it was bored...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wetware error

Software design flaw, as opposed to reckless greed and conspiracy you say?

[Glen Turner]

How all too convenient

There's a lot of concern and pending litigation surrounding ratings agencies' valuations of derivative products. Now it appears that the only public explanation of the errors in valuation is a simple coding error. Not anything the management could be responsible for, such as a culture of greed over accuracy. Hmmm.

Mine's the coat with the now-worthless AAA-rated debt in the pocket.