they give them ratings to help guide consumers as to what they are worth. they issue ratings. they are the ratings agencies. and they are central to the reason wall street cratered. the american economy didn't crater like it had been hit by an asteroid because people were investing in companies that didn't pan out. it wasn't that kind of a collapse. it wasn't that there was a war somewhere and suddenly nobody could get any oil or something. that was not why we had a financial collapse. we had a financial collapse because of fake erie. we had a financial collapse because people were buying and selling things at prices that were totally, totally fake. and the people who were selling them knew it. it was a con game that everybody was in on. and when everybody finally had to acknowledge that the actual value of these things that they had been trading at these inflated prices was not the value they had been trading them at, everybody finely had to admit what the real value was of these things they had been buying and selling. everything collapsed. so even if you don't understand the overall dynamics of the housing market and all the different ways things are traded and how people in lower