&gt; as they seem to have made a correct calculation that they can extract money out of taxpayers through this junk paper, and that is not what any economist would praise as markets functioning for the benefit of society.<p>Well, it&#x27;s not like the credit agencies bailed out the banks <i>themselves</i>. The version of the criticism I have heard was that the banks (and credit agencies) knew that the taxpayers will bail them out if they fail, and therefore they took unnecessary risk - making investments just as useless as the nails made by Soviet nail factories.