Standard and Poor's
From Conservapedia
Standard and Poor's (S&P) is a credit rating service with a 150-year history of providing independent, quality assessments of how likely a company or government is to honor its financial obligations.
S&P downgraded the United States' credit rating from AAA to AA+ on August 5, 2011.[1] While this shows how the liberal policies of the Obama administration have failed us, it is important to note that S&P is one of the rating agencies that gave mortgage derivatives AAA ratings, which contributed to the current financial crisis.
It also operates stock indexes: its most well-known is the "S&P 500", a broad-based index of United States stocks.