McGraw-Hill Mixes Its Book and Bond-Rating Businesses
In his forthcoming book, Bailout Nation, financial blogger Barry Ritholtz sticks some of the blame for Wall Street's meltdown on credit-rating agencies like S&P. McGraw-Hill owns S&P — and now it's not publishing Ritholtz's book.
Clusterstock reports that Ritholtz got a sizeable advance, and McGraw-Hill had received 22,000 preorders. The publisher claimed that editors couldn't agree with Ritholtz on how to footnote his sources — a ridiculous-sounding quibble, since Ritholtz says most of his sources are either articles posted online or books available on Amazon.com. It's McGraw-Hill's loss: Ritholtz writes that his contract with McGraw-Hill granted him final edit. If he can keep his advance and take the book elsewhere, it's just another price the company is paying for letting S&P run wild rubberstamping Wall Street's toxic bonds.