S&P sees end of subprime mess in sight

Rating agency Standard & Poor's didn't see the subprime mess coming, but don't worry, now they're telling us the worst of it is over. In a statement, Standard & Poor's credit analyst Scott Bugie said that "The positive news is that, in our opinion, the global financial sector appears to have already disclosed the majority of valuation write-downs of subprime" asset-backed securities.

S&P analyst Tanya Azarchs said "Based on available information, we believe that the largest players can be seen as having undertaken a rigorous valuation methodology to come up with conservative valuations."

This is the kind of stuff I love about Wall Street. No matter how wrong an analyst is, not matter how much of a role they play in market carnage, you can always count on them to bounce right back with more predictions. Remember, this subrprime prognosis that sent the market on a rally comes from the same firm that Marketwatch called "one of the three main credit-rating agencies that served as enablers of the subprime-mortgage boom."

Of course, making overconfident predictions is their job. But given what's happened over the past few years, I think you'd have to be pretty dumb to listen to anything they say.