STEVENSON JACOBS
AP Business Writer
NEW YORK – Billionaire investor Warren Buffett and the CEO of credit rating agency Moody’s Corp. are scheduled to face questions Wednesday from a bipartisan panel probing the roots the financial crisis.
The congressionally chartered Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission subpoenaed Buffett to appear at the New York hearing on the credibility of credit ratings and the investments made based on those ratings.
Rating agencies like Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings have been criticized for giving unrealistically high ratings to complex investments backed by risky mortgages and other assets. When homeowners started defaulting on their mortgages, the rating agencies downgraded billions of dollars of investments at once. That helped spark the financial crisis.