"As if movie studios hired film critics to review their movies, and paid them only if the reviews were positive"

Robert Reich explains how the conflict of interest in mortgage lenders paying credit-rating companies yielded a slew of profits a few years ago and generated the current housing meltdown in which mounting mortgage defaults are pulling lenders and credit-raters down, too.

It's called "karma," boys, and the path of destruction is wide and deep. But karma does not account for collateral damage to innocent bystanders--like children of defaulters or low-level laid off bank employees--who were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.