Standard & Poor’s has downgraded Greece, Spain and Portugal and has warned Ireland that it might suffer a similar fate. Do I hear this right?

Is S&P still in the business of producing risk analyses? Should the rating agencies not have gone out of business after they told us for years that the risk associated with the ballooning debt of banks and large companies was nothing to worry about? How can these agencies, which were systematically wrong in the past, have any credibility in whatever risk analysis they make?