[jackbill]

He sought to use government influence to perpetrate a fraud on the public by getting the agencies to abandon their fiduciary obligation to the public, all to facilitate the dumping of worthless securities on the public served by the agencies.

I suppose that he could not be charged with "conspiracy to commit fraud" because "they would have difficulty proving intent"?

Just like Mary Jo White not prosecuting Torricelli because they only had the testimony of a convicted felon. Message? Any crooked politician can skate if he deals only with convicted felons.

[thucydides]

Rubin made the call to a treasury official, who refused to do what he asked. No fraud was consummated. Nor was there any conspiracy apparently, since Rubin did not reach agreement with anyone to carry out such a scheme (unless someone could be found at Citibank to say, "yes, we all agreed that he would bring pressure on the rating agencies." However, he clearly tried to do something improper, even if the good character of the treasury official resulted in his being turned down. None of the media is focusing on the fact that so far, Rubin is the only government official who set out do something improper, never mind that he was thwarted. What Rubin set out to do may be worse than what some of the company executives did. They put forth financial statements that undertook some generous and questionable treatments of certain items, yet one could see something questionable was going on, and in fact many analysts concluded that investors should stay away from their stocks long before they went under, calling them a house of cards. On the other hand, had Rubin succeeded, nobody would have had a hint that the ratings put out by the independent rating agencies were false and misleading.