Ron Papanek, who heads RiskMetrics' strategy unit, cautions that the creditgrades aren't well suited to X-raying financial firms because of the complexity of the assets on their balance sheets.
In a famous 2006 presentation at a conference hosted by Grant's Interest Rate Observer, he explained in painstaking detail the flaws in subprime-mortgage securitizations, and in the high grades awarded to them by government-anointed credit-rating agencies.