From the department of redundancy department and bureau of subprime management bureau, the largest debt ratings company blames 500 billion in losses to a programmer error.

Nevermind the fact that Moody’s ratings were the same as the Standard and Poor’s debt ratings.

Moodys wants you to believe that a computer was responsible for the subprime mortgage mess and that get rich quick mortgage brokers, misguided financers, predatory lenders and unqualified borrowers were not at fault for the housing crunch.

So instead of admitng to widespread deception and fraud by all parties involved, blame the computers.

I find it odd that if there is a 1 cent error with computers at the supermarket checkout stand this bug will be fixed immediately, and the largest debt ratings company that is responsible for hundreds of billions of dollars has a bug that goes unnoticed and unfixed for 4 years.

Read the article about Moody’s debt rating software bugs at Financial Times and get an unbiased discussion here.