As you'll recall, back in 2011 S&P abruptly pulled ratings from a new issue deal citing "discrepancies in how its methodology was being applied". Then they were radio silent for a year before meekly announcing that the discrepancy was insignificant and they were back to rating deals.
Bloomberg has an article out today that "three people with knowledge of the matter" said that the SEC is investigating how S&P rated a certain CMBS in 2011. I think we can all guess which one that was.
This latest inquiry is separate from the 2/4/2013 suit brought by Justice Department against S&P, which is focused primarily on resi deals from 2004 - 2007.
**Update** For whatever reason two robo-users have chosen this one post to spam with unwanted content in the comments section. It waste a ton of my time deleting them everyday so I'm closing the comments on this one post and reporting the two users. It goes against my general rule of allowing any comments to come in, and not making any changes to posts - even if I make an error I'll leave it, or at least acknowledge it, and then include an updated statement. However, I'm not going to let a robot take over the comments section either. What an arsehole.