I was talking specifically about the U.S. credit rating agencies, but yes, the accounting firms do provide fig leafs as well (Enron and Arthur Anderson being the notorious example). With mortgage-backed securities it looks like in many cases the rating agencies didn’t have the fig leafs and just took the issuers of the securities at their word based on the way the tranches were structured.
In the U.S. the rating agencies need to be non-profit entities funded by the buyers of the securities, but nothing has changed and the perverse incentives remain in place.
