he joins me now, along with lynn stout; she is a professor of corporate and business law at cornell law school. we welcome you both. attorney general hood, what are some examples of what standard & poor's did that they should not have done? >> well, they made misrepresentations. they portrayed themselves as if they were pure as the driven snow and they were making independent evaluations of these mortgage-backed securities that the banks were running through. they were making three the four times as much for these evaluations, and they get, you know repeating over and over that they were independent in their evaluations. and they weren't. what we found out that that was a violation of the state's unfair and deceptive trade practices. consumer protection laws came into play. so connecticut initially filed first. richard blumenthal, who iszg4ew- senator now was the attorney general then called me and encouraged me to file. we filed second. we had a long, dragged-out battle. but when the federal government and other states joined in, we moved quickly toward settlement. >> >> woodruff: lynn