I believe the best known of the ones that failed was called "Abacus" - there is a lot of documentation publicly available.
From my viewpoint, representing an investment aas having a particular rating from Moody's or S&P would indicate that they told their clients the investments had a certain ratio of risk/reward.
Common stocks have no ratings from Moody's or S&P; these are interest-bearing investments that supposedly have a certain rate of return per year; though unlike CD's they do not have a fixed lifetime as mortgagees can repay a mortgage early, or refinance, without penalty.
I wasn't so concerned with the specific nature of the investment vehicle in question as it seemed the complaint about GS was simply that they had sold to a client a product which they implicitly had deemed a poor choice.
Not being a securities lawyer I don't have a 100% accurate answer for you; however I would say there is a difference between common stocks which have no performance guarantees and bonds/warrants/etc which do have guarantees (with risk/reward taken into consideration of course).
From my viewpoint, representing an investment aas having a particular rating from Moody's or S&P would indicate that they told their clients the investments had a certain ratio of risk/reward.
Common stocks have no ratings from Moody's or S&P; these are interest-bearing investments that supposedly have a certain rate of return per year; though unlike CD's they do not have a fixed lifetime as mortgagees can repay a mortgage early, or refinance, without penalty.