now, w that these investigations are in the preliminary stage. and we don t know yet whether any civil or criminal charges, whether any findings of wrongdoing will come out of this, but, jake, clearly, the government is very interested in finding out what happened, and making sure it doesn t happen again. all right, matt egan, thank you so much. there is a new warning sign in all of today s economic data. credit ratings for moody s has officially downgraded its ute look for the banking industry. it s keeping an eye on specific banks, i want to bring in justin wolfer, he s a professor of politics at the university of michigan. justin, thank you for joining us. moody is downgrading the outlook. what does this mean for practice and people watching right now? i think one answer is not very much. so, when we see bank stock prices fall or their credit ratings start to get cut, it could be that there s a liquidity problem that s a
and the banking system while better off than in 2008 is still relatively weak. gregg: yeah. in the particular bank of america. now, warren buffett pumped in about five billion which certainly helped b of a, but they re suffering because of their acquisition of countrywide. absolutely, of countrywide. so they have an awful rot of those bad loans to work off. you ve got the federal government suing them in another case for mortgage foreclosure problems. that could take another big chunk out of the banks, bank of america gregg: could this ruin b of a or not? well, i think that is probably going too far at this stage. b of a s stronger than it was in 2008, but there s no question that they re struggling. the key thing, look at bank stock prices. gregg: sure. because those have been really low, and when you look at that, they re saying, you know what? their earnings are going to be hurt for many, many years. gregg: yeah. i wonder if this could cause another bank bailout by the f