Mortgage Bond Insurers In Need of $200 Billion

From the UK Times via calculated risk:

http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2008/01/egan-jones-monolines-need-200-billion.html

A couple hundred billion here a couple hundred there...after a while it starts to add up.

A related issue via The Big Picture:

http://bigpicture.typepad.com/comments/2008/01/quote-of-the--2.html

Bill Ackman asks if Fitch Ratings should really have a Triple AAA rating on MBIA:

Does a company deserve your highest Triple A rating whose stock price has declined 90%, has cut its dividend, is scrambling to raise capital, completed a partial financing at 14% interest (now trading at a 20% yield one week later), has incurred losses massively in excess of its promised zero-loss expectations wiping out more than half of book value, with Berkshire Hathaway as a new competitor, having lost access to its only liquidity facility, and having concealed material information from the marketplace? Can this possibly make sense?

The huge rally back in MBI from four days ago is looking spent, although the 5 day moving average is still pointing up.

-s