This is the time of year when incentive compensation is calculated and distributed. Or would have been distributed, I should say, in the case of loss-making trading desks and hedge funds. Naturally, there is no greater object of obsession than in the financial world than one’s bonus. Everyone agrees that’s why you get up early, leave late, and keep the payor’s interests in mind.

For some reason, though, there’s one group of rats in the maze that are supposed to ignore the cheese when they turn this way or that. I refer to the leading ratings agencies, led by Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s, and Fitch, which are paid by the issuers to serve the interests of the buyers. Even after the structured credit markets, designed with their endorsement, have been kicked into flinders before our eyes, we’re supposed to believe that their compensation structure has had no influence on their thinking. Any sitting judge who has a mutual fund or unit trust with a few shares in a party’s company will recuse himself from the case or face censure.