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THURSDAY JANUARY 31
Wild-On At Witching Hour What we are learning about the sneakiness of credit-ratings agencies and bond-insurers these days could fill Shea’s Stadium. Rule No. 1: always report bad news in the middle of the night (as if no one’s looking). Clearly taking this to heart, MBIA waited until just past 12 a.m. EST to drop the bombshell that it had weathered a second consecutive quarterly loss, with write-downs in its credit-derivatives portfolio swelling to $3.5 billion. In what we are sure was a coincidence, S&P also held off until the dead of night to say it downgraded or put on negative watch around $534 billion of mortgage-backed debt, which means banks will have to double their predicted losses to $265 billion from $130 billion. (Since, so far, they’ve only reported a fraction of that, it looks like just about everyone is being naughty-naughty.) January 2008New User?Sign up to get free access to TraderDaily.com
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