&gt; From where I stand, there is a compelling, coherent story of people being idiots, but the cynical, blatant corruption seems missing.<p>Yeah, like I said, its closer to opinion than verifiable fact.<p>However, the paper basically admits the facts I use to conclude that are correct but draws the opposite conclusion by comparing incestuously rather than across verticals.<p>Yes, <i>relative to other mortgage related things</i>, the ratings were correct but such ratings are published as absolute probabilities and not as relative assurances that AAA &gt; AA &gt; A &gt; BBB. The fact the absolutes were in error for a single portion of a single vertical among multiple firms implies its an incentive problem which the paper agrees. It just draws the line in a different place because its analyzing a different question [Insiders vs. Outsiders rather than Insiders vs. Insiders].<p>&gt; The answer may well involve the information and incentive structures present inside Wall Street firms. Employees who could recognize the iceberg looming in front of the ship may not have been listened to, or they may not have had the right incentives to speak up. If so, then the information and incentive problems giving rise to the crisis would not have existed between mortgage industry insiders and outsiders, as the inside job story suggests. Rather, these problems would have existed between different floors of the same Wall Street firm.<p>The paper believes its internal to the firms but the uniformity of the problem between firms implies it was the culture of all the large firms and likely exported to the credit bureaus due to heavy competition in a single vertical. The difference between what the paper is arguing vs. what I&#x27;m arguing is likely impossible to determine because of the incestuous movements between those firms and even the credit bureaus of the human capital involved.