I was writing about the new SEC rules on rating agencies and found a good ditty from the past.

>In the most famous instance of rating agency self-reproach, documented in a Securities and Exchange Commission report issued in July 2008, a worker in S&P’s structured products division bemoaned the firm’s standards in an instant message exchange with another employee.

>”We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it,” the employee wrote.