Panel Subpoenas Documents of Moody’s

[thundley4]

A federal panel said Wednesday that it had issued a subpoena to the credit-rating agency Moody’s Investors Service after the firm failed to promptly respond to its request for documents and e-mail messages, Sewell Chan writes in The New York Times.

The subpoena suggested an intensified activity by the bipartisan panel, known as the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which was created to examine the causes of the financial crisis.

It was the first such subpoena issued by the panel, which was created by Congress last year and is required to complete its findings by Dec. 15. The panel has been criticized for getting off to a slow start and being unfocused in its inquiry, given the wide scope of its mandate.

In addition, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations plans to focus on credit-rating agencies at a hearing on Friday, its third one on the financial crisis. Raymond W. McDaniel Jr., chairman and chief executive of Moody’s, and Kathleen A. Corbet, a former president of Standard & Poor’s, are among the executives expected to testify.

Phil Angelides, chairman of the commission, said in a telephone call with reporters that the panel had requested documents from Moody’s on March 10. The firm began to produce documents only after the subpoena was issued, he said.

  NY Times

The 0Bama Regime doesn't like the fact that Moody's has suggested the US's bond rating could drop?