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The Motley Fool March 6, 2008 Morgan Housel |
Is This the Last Straw for Ambac? Bond insurers may be running out of options.  |
The Motley Fool March 17, 2008 Morgan Housel |
This Could Be the End of Bond Insurance Just when it started to look a little better, bond insurers face a fatal blow.  |
The Motley Fool January 25, 2008 Sham Gad |
What a Rating Downgrade Really Means Repercussions of bond rating downgrades could wreak havoc on investors.  |
The Motley Fool February 13, 2008 Morgan Housel |
Buffett Offers Bond Insurers a Hand ... Maybe Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway announces that it will offer the three largest bond insurers, Ambac, MBIA, and FGIC, the opportunity to essentially turn over the tax-free municipal portion of their bond insurance portfolio to Berkshire.  |
The Motley Fool January 25, 2008 Morgan Housel |
Talk of Bailing Out Bond Insurers Sparks Wild Ride In the past three days, bond-insurance giants have been on a seesaw that has spun the heads of even the most iron-stomached investors.  |
The Motley Fool February 8, 2008 Morgan Housel |
The Moody's Blues Debt-ratings agency Moody's watches its earnings and reputation erode, as the once-lucrative business of rating batches of collateralized debt obligations has begun to sour.  |
Financial Advisor March 2008 Marla Brill |
Managing The Municipal Malaise With bond insurer ratings on the brink and hedge funds fresh off a selling spree, the normally staid municipal bond market has taken on a more volatile profile over the last few months.  |
The Motley Fool February 19, 2008 Morgan Housel |
Bond Insurers' Bait and Switch Bond insurers Ambac and privately held FGIC are both throwing around the possibility of breaking themselves apart, separating their still-stable municipal divisions from their roiled CDO departments.  |
U.S. Banker July 2008 Michael Sisk |
A `Radical' Answer to Credit-Ratings Conflict The government should remove itself completely from the credit-rating business, stop deciding which company can and can't rate a bond, and stop making institutions pay attention to rating agencies whose work may be shoddy - and, it often turns out, is.  |
The Motley Fool December 28, 2007 Rich Duprey |
Bonding With Buffett Warren Buffett plans to start a bonding agency for local and state governments.  |
BusinessWeek August 6, 2007 Roben Farzad |
Let The Blame Begin Everyone played some role in the subprime mess - the Street, lenders, ratings agencies, hedge funds, even homeowners. Where does responsibility lie?  |
BusinessWeek November 12, 2007 Matthew Goldstein |
Wall Street's Next Worry The credit crisis is spreading from Wall Street to a less well known corner of the financial world, that of the bond insurers. An obscure company called ACA Capital might spark the explosion.  |
The Motley Fool February 8, 2008 Morgan Housel |
Rating Agencies Begin to Come Clean If any group deserves the most blame for shady practices that gave credence to subprime debt, it might be the rating agencies.  |
CFO June 1, 2010 Randy Myers |
Ratings Disaster Congress takes another stab at reforming the credit-rating agencies, whose AAA seal of approval helped fuel the subprime crisis. But will any change truly make a difference?  |
BusinessWeek November 26, 2007 David Henry |
A Chain Reaction in Shaky Debt? As exotic CDOs topple, the impact could ripple through debt markets and wallop more funds and banks.  |
The Motley Fool July 29, 2011 Morgan Housel |
Still the Most Powerful Companies in the World The unmatched power of the rating agencies Moody's and Standard & Poor's.  |
The Motley Fool September 17, 2010 James Early |
Muni Bonds: Safe or a Sucker's Bet? Hear this view from municipal guru Tom Kozlik.  |
Investment Advisor March 2008 Marlene Y. Satter |
Mortgaging the Future The impact of the subprime on the insurance industry could be huge.  |
CFO September 1, 2008 Alix Stuart |
Over Rated? The subprime fiasco has put corporate credit-ratings on thin ice.  |
The Motley Fool May 13, 2008 Tom Hutchinson |
MBIA Disappoints; Stock Rises Investors speculate that the worst could be over for this bond insurer.  |
The Motley Fool April 24, 2008 Morgan Housel |
Ambac Obliterated: Is This the End? Reacting to sour news, shares of Ambac plummet to their lowest levels ever since the company went public in 1991.  |
Investment Advisor October 2008 George Strickland |
Sleuthing Bonds Municipal bonds are now more likely to move in the opposite direction of Treasury bonds, where before the two markets commonly moved in the same direction.  |
Financial Planning December 17, 2007 Matthew Posner |
The Bond Buyer Shifts in the municipal marketplace have impacted participants in various ways, causing players to reassess their investment strategies going forward.  |
Financial Planning March 1, 2008 Dakin Campbell |
Muni Volume Plunges A dramatically changed municipal market and concerns relating to bond insurers have sent January new-issue volume plunging to levels not seen since September 2001.  |
The Motley Fool February 15, 2008 Christopher Barker |
Monoline Hits Bottom Line at UBS The Swiss bank won't be the last to announce a monoline writedown.  |
The Motley Fool May 21, 2010 Morgan Housel |
Put the Rating Agencies Out of Their Misery Before It's Too Late Once again, raters have proven themselves stuck on stupid. Congress is waking up. Two amendments in the just-passed Senate financial overhaul bill could euthanize the flawed parts of the rating system.  |
HBS Working Knowledge June 13, 2012 Maggie Starvish |
HBS Cases: A Startup Takes On the Credit Ratings Giants Moody's, Fitch, and Standard & Poor's dominated the credit ratings industry for decades. Could the recession weaken their hold?  |
The Motley Fool February 1, 2008 Morgan Housel |
MBIA's Foggy Future MBIA, one of the world's largest bond-insurance companies, announces a fourth-quarter loss, but despite a murky outlook, management stays confident.  |
The Motley Fool December 20, 2007 Dan Caplinger |
The Ratings Game The companies that rate bonds look at several factors in rating fixed-income securities. Learn how these ratings work, and don't buy without knowing the facts.  |
BusinessWeek October 1, 2007 David Henry |
Anatomy Of A Ratings Downgrade How S&P and Moody's miscalculated risk on two top-rated pools of mortgage-backed bonds.  |
BusinessWeek July 9, 2007 Goldstein et al. |
Mutually Assured Mayhem Wall Street is on edge, scrambling to buck up Bear Stearns and avert a domino-effect debacle.  |
Registered Rep. June 9, 2008 |
Credit Downgrades, More Write-Downs And The ARS Market Credit downgrades to MBIA and AMBAC Financial Group, the world's largest bond insurers, will lead to more write-downs at Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and UBS, according to a new research report.  |
Financial Advisor December 2009 Eric Uhlfelder |
Receding From A Perfect Storm Uncertainty has clouded convictions about some tax-and revenue-based municipal bonds.  |
Financial Planning October 1, 2008 Jack Herman |
Insurance Woes Problems for the financial guaranty industry.  |
Financial Advisor June 2008 Bruce W. Fraser |
No Longer A Wallflower For your clients' fixed-income portfolios, now may be a desirable time to be thinking of investing in simple, plain vanilla investments.  |
The Motley Fool August 7, 2007 Michael Leibert |
Moody's: No Chink in the Armor Despite feeling some heat, Moody's projects solid growth and maintains a strong competitive position. Investors, take note.  |
Financial Advisor May 2008 Marla Brill |
Munis' Turn To Shine One of the country's most influential fixed-income managers is enthusiastic about a municipal bond market that she says is more exciting than any she has seen in her 23-year career.  |
The Motley Fool March 12, 2009 Alex Dumortier |
GE's Downgrade Is a Blessing in Disguise Standard & Poor's downgrades General Electric's long-term debt rating by a single notch, from AAA to AA+, with a "stable" outlook. Was it the right decision?  |
The Motley Fool December 16, 2011 Alex Dumortier |
MF Global Infographic: How the Trade Actually Went Down A credit rating downgrade was all it took to spark a liquidity crisis.  |
The Motley Fool January 23, 2008 Morgan Housel |
Bond Insurers Smile, for Now It hasn't been a great year for the bond-insurance business so far. Even with Tuesday's massive gains, both Ambac Financial and MBIA remain down 70% and 33% for 2008, respectively.  |
The Motley Fool July 30, 2008 Morgan Housel |
Ambac Financial Will Burn Your Portfolio Ambac's days of lucrative profits could be a thing of the past, and that's the best-case scenario. Even under that rosy outcome, there's still little reason to hold Ambac.  |
The Motley Fool December 28, 2011 Dan Caplinger |
2011 Could Have Been Worse for MBIA As a key player in the mortgage-bond insurance industry, MBIA suffered greatly during the housing crash.  |
HBS Working Knowledge January 20, 2009 Julia Hanna |
Risky Business with Structured Finance Even modest imprecision in estimating underlying risks is magnified disproportionately when securities are pooled and tranched.  |
The Motley Fool April 14, 2008 Morgan Housel |
How Lehman Played Musical Chairs With Its Loans Lehman Brothers sheds light on new Fed lending facilities. Will it work?  |
The Motley Fool September 3, 2008 Tom Hutchinson |
This Week's Biggest Movers This weekly column looks at the reason behind the largest stock-price movers of the week. Take a look at: Freddie Mac... Fannie Mae... MBIA... Ambac... Talbots...  |
The Motley Fool September 7, 2007 Seth Jayson |
Wall Street Under the Magnifying Glass Credit-rating agencies prepare to be probed by the attorney generals of New York and Ohio, as well as the SEC, as to how they managed to package pools of low-quality loans into groups and pass off portions of it as being A-list.  |
The Motley Fool April 18, 2011 Alex Dumortier |
Revealed: 3 Emails That Explain the Crisis Released last week, a new 650-page Senate report on the financial crisis describes multiple aspects of a financial system run amok, including the way in which bankers muscled ratings agencies to turbo-charge their deal-making machine.  |
The Motley Fool May 26, 2009 Morgan Housel |
The Most Powerful Companies in the World Allowing one company's actions to have so much influence over the economy is terribly dangerous and never should have happened. But it is still happening, with ratings agencies.  |
Investment Advisor August 2007 Kathleen M. McBride |
Coming Home to Roost Lurking problems in CMOs, CDOs, and junk dominate this year's Morningstar Investment Conference.  |
The Motley Fool December 2, 2009 Anand Chokkavelu |
Morningstar Has a AAA-Rated Plan Morningstar announced today that it's getting into the credit rating business.  |