Biz media blames credit agencies for mortgage meltdown

TheDeal.com executive editor Yvette Kantrow writes Monday that the business media is falsely blaming credit rating agencies — which have been blamed for all of the financial problems of the past 20 years — for the woes in the mortgage industry.

Kantrow wrote, “Even the luxury-addled minds over at Condé Nast’s Portfolio cottoned onto this one. Its second issue, which hit newsstands in August, featured a lengthy piece that described the mortgage mess as the ratings agencies’ Waterloo — and named Rosner as a critic of the industry, to boot.

“Maybe nobody inside the Beltway reads or cares about Portfolio or the WSJ. Still, singling out just one group for blame in the subprime bust is overly simplistic. What about the lenders who made the loans, the borrowers who accepted them or the Wall Street firms who packaged them into securities? And that’s just for starters. For a more comprehensive view of who’s at fault, a reader would do better to consult the Sept. 17 issue of Fortune and its overview, ‘Oh, the people you’ll blame,’ which also includes a section on — you guessed it — the ratings agencies.

“In any case, the mortgage crisis certainly has been a boon for Rosner, who has been making the media rounds with his message about the ratings agencies and getting much play for his efforts. Over the past few weeks, he’s been quoted or mentioned everywhere from The Washington Post to the International Herald Tribune to the U.K.’s Sunday Independent to The Economist opining on the credit agencies and subprime debt.”

Read more here.