You can't make this stuff up, right? I mean, groups like the NCRC were pushing for loans to minorities, the loans were issued on the only basis possible without putting the lenders out of business and therefore drying up access to loans -- and now the complaint is that the loans should not have been made. And if the complaint is that the loans shouldn't have been made, then why isn't NCRC suing the originators of the loans?
On the other hand, it's just too bloody predictable. As one commenter at the Overlawyered site noted:
Th[e] way it works is: the ratings agencies have money. The community organizations want money.Ratings agencies are being sued because they still have money -- after all, they're not in line for bailouts. If you want to know who some community group is going to sue next, just look for the target with the deep pockets.
(An aside: ratings agencies are effectively chartered by the government, specifically the Securities and Exchange Commission. That means that they had no incentive to better their ratings procedures because 1) there was artificially-reduced competition from non-chartered ratings firms, and 2) if all anyone cares about is whether a ratings agency has received government approval, why should a ratings agency bother to create and then advertise ratings standards better than those the promulgated by the government?)
