So… ‘vanity’ ratings… what’s the point of them then.

I think "vanity" is the wrong term because their existing credit rating, which they attempt to preserve, impacts all other borrowing (and possibly other agreements and finance vehicles, etc.) that they undertake.

So it's probably valuable to retain that credit rating.

The real issue here is how simple it is to game the rating agency in this way and how the market allows Meta to "launder" this activity through the ratings agency.

This is, in fact, a fairly close analogue to the housing crisis and the ratings laundering that was done with the CDOs[1]. The difference is, instead of drilling down to thousands of mortgages - each with different characteristics - you really just drill down to Meta ... which might not be too risky ...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation

There are a lot of places where the credit ratings are hardcoded (to borrow a term) into funds. There are pension funds and other vehicles that might be bound to only invest in AA rated companies.

So if a company drops their AA rating it could force them out of a lot of funds and investment vehicles.

This complicated vehicle where the debt and assets are in another LLC isn’t actually tricking anyone in finance. If you’re reading about it from blogs then it’s already common knowledge. The structure isn’t actually a one way trick, it’s a set of tradeoffs and protections for the company. They probably could have achieved better terms going direct but with higher risk.