Standard & Poor's has already said it will vigorously defend a DOJ lawsuit over ratings given to subprime mortgage bonds leading up to the housing crisis. S&P has already said the lawsuit "cherry-picked" internal e-mails to provide additional context for their case.

The New York Times published some of those internal e-mails this week, highlighting the mood inside the ratings giant right before the subprime debacle. The NYT writes:

One comes from an S.& P. analyst in March 2007 borrowing from the Talking Heads song “Burning Down the House,” creating new lyrics: “Subprime is boi-ling o-ver. Bringing down the house."

In another 2007 e-mail, an analyst responds to a question about his new job: “Job’s going great. Aside from the fact that the M.B.S. world is crashing, investors and the media hate us and we’re all running around to save face … no complaints.”