Ratings: what are they good for?

They also gave AAA's to  the Lehman's products investors to AIG's. And You Place Your Trusts In These Scoundrels:-

From Bloomberg: S&P Cuts to Junk Mortgage Bonds It Rated AAA in 2009

    Standard & Poor’s cut to junk the ratings on certain securities, backed by U.S. mortgage bonds, that it granted AAA grades when they were created last year ...

    The reductions were among downgrades to 308 classes of so- called re-remics, or re-securitizations, created from 2005 through 2009 ...

    “The downgrades reflect our assessment of the significant deterioration in performance of the loans backing the underlying certificates,” S&P analysts Cesar Romero and Terry G. Osterweil said in the statement.

Rated AAA last year and now junk ... ratings: what are they good for?