Excerpts from David Segal's December 8 article in The New York Times, and the Ohio Attorney General's November 20 lawsuit against the Rating Agencies.

Dozens of lawsuits have been filed against Moody's Investors Service, Standard and Poor's, and Fitch Ratings. They are the big three rating agencies.

On November 20. the Ohio Attorney General, Richard Condray, sued the rating agencies on behalf of Ohio Pension Funds, and then the Connecticut Attorney General said he planned to join the Ohio suit.

Mr. Condray said that the rating agencies total disregard for the life's work of ordinary Ohions caused the collapse of our housing and credit markets, and is at the heart of what's wrong with Wall Street today.

The November 20 Ohio Attorney General's suit against the rating agencies said:

"This action arises out of the Ohio Funds’ purchases of certain asset-backed securities (“ABS”), namely residential mortgage-backed securities (“RMBS”) and commercial mortgage-backed securities (“CMBS”), during the period from January 1, 2005 through July 8, 2008 (the “Relevant Period”) in reliance on the false and misleading AAA (or equivalent) credit ratings that were negligently assigned to the securities by Defendants Standard & Poor’s Financial Services LLC, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., Moody’s Corp., Moody’s Investors Service, Inc., and Fitch, Inc. (collectively, the “Rating Agencies” or “Defendants”).

The rating agencies "provided unjustified and inflated ratings in exchange for the lucrative fees that the ABS issuers paid the Defendants for not only rating the securities but also for helping to structure them."

The rating agencies could find themselves contending with a phalanx of state officials like those that sued big tobacco in the 1990's.