A low point – perhaps one should say the height of ridiculousness – was reached last year when rating agencies intensified their surveillance of government debt, and markets that had been victimized by the agencies’ incompetence and bad faith became fixated on their evaluations. Lehman Brothers had been awarded a high rating on the very eve of its collapse, yet now the rating agencies criticize governments that pulled the global economy back from the abyss for violating accounting principles.
一个低点——或者可以将其称为一处荒谬剧的高潮——就在去年发生，当时那些评级机构纷纷调低对各国政府债券的评级，而被这些机构的失职所害的市场则迟迟无法打消对它们的怀疑。在崩溃逼近的前夕雷曼兄弟竟然还得到了一个很高的评级，谁知现在那些评级机构却反咬一口，指责政府用破坏会计准则的方式将世界经济从深渊中拉出来。