Nobody "paid off the rating agencies". Or, more accurately: everyone did. It was standard practice for the rating agencies to be paid by those being rated. Now

Nobody "paid off the rating agencies". Or, more accurately: everyone did. It was standard practice for the rating agencies to be paid by those being rated. Now that's obviously not a terribly smart idea. But there's simply no way to blame any single individual when none of them had the power to the system by themselves. I mean: quite obviously the companies being rated would have loved for others to bear the costs for it.