Moody's coding error leads to flawed ratings

A Financial Times investigation has revealed that a coding flaw resulted in many so-called CPDOs, or constant proportion debt obligations, earning AAA ratings. A coding flaw? It's unclear whether the code was written internally, or whether it was part of a third-party system. Either way, it raises quality assurance issues. QA ranks low, but this is a reminder of how important the job is. The curious thing is that Standard & Poor's were also rating these securities AAA. No word of a glitch over there. But it suggests that there may be more to the story than just a mere coding flaw. A conspiracy theorist might suggest that someone hard-coded around the real code in order to get these securities the highest rating at Moody's.  

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