They couldn't let him get away with it. The Security and Exchange Commission (Consob of the United States) has opened an investigation into Standard & Poor's, the rating agency which last week committed the impiety of downgrading American debt. The suspicion is that the most sensational downgrade in history was tainted by insider trading. To clarify, the SEC appears to have asked the agency to provide a list of men who knew about the cut before the official announcement was made.
For the moment we are still in the preliminary investigation phase and it is not even certain that we will arrive at formal accusations. Of course, S&P falls from the clouds and says it never had any suspicions about possible leaks or excessively casual trading operations. Suspicions, however, came to the Americans. The most hated of the rating agencies has made a decision too serious not to deserve insights, above all because the sisters Moody's and Fitch have chosen not to follow it. The question that everyone has been asking since last Friday is only one: has Standard & Poor's gained anything from the beheading of the American triple A?
