The New York Attorney General has begun a probe into whether eight of Wall Street’s largest firms have provided misleading information to credit rating agencies.  The firms subject to the investigation are Credit Suisse, Credit Agricole, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch (which has since been acquired by Bank of America), Morgan Stanley, and UBS.

Some Wall Street critics believe that Wall Street’s relationship with the credit rating agencies were a major cause of the economic crisis.  Rating agencies gave high ratings to bank-issued securities that ultimately proved bad, while financial firms used various strategies to score high ratings on their investment products.  There have also been complaints that the rating agencies did not warn the public of the risks of investments related to subprime mortgages and were slow to act to lower the ratings of troubled financial firms.

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