Coding Flaws Caused Moody's Debt Rating Errors

An anonymous reader writes "The Financial Times has the story that billions in incorrect AAA ratings given out by Moody's were the result of a coding error in its computer models. 'Internal Moody's documents seen by the FT show that some senior staff within the credit agency knew early in 2007 that products rated the previous year had received top-notch triple A ratings and that, after a computer coding error was corrected, their ratings should have been up to four notches lower.'"

A Moody Bug?

[SIR_Taco]

Great... sounds like my girlfriend

Yeah right, that's what it was...

[Colin Smith]

A coding error.

 

Re:monetary incentive to inflate ratings

[spun]

Damn it, it can be so hard to count your money with one hand while covering your ass with the other. Sort of like talking out of both sides of your mouth, it takes practice.

Re:After the OpenSSL bug

[Gospodin]

And given how difficult it is to right correct code...

No kidding! Look how difficult it is to "right" correct English!

Re:Yeah right, that's what it was...

[PotatoFarmer]

while (true) {
if (isSECWatching = false) {
commitEgregiousFraud();
}}


Assignment vs. equality check strikes again!

It can't be Coders complaining

[cps42]

Any dev worth his salt would be blaming, in order:
1) The Firewall
2) The Load Balancer
3) The Firewall
4) The Network Routers
5) The Firewall
6) The Network Cables
7) The Firewall
8) The Network Engineering Team
long before they figured out it was a Layer 8 issue in the code.

Re:Likely a feature

[Dachannien]

banking coders tend to be rather cowboy-ish

That's because they're always programming in COWBOL.

*rimshot*

Thanks, I'll be here all week.