Great, great stuff which is appreciated in these times when people like you make a real difference! The lack of journalism in America is sad, and sadly related to a lack of journalism. IMHO, People are looking for total full disclosure and FASB/GAAP reality and not the next Enron illusion or false and misleading earnings report from companies that are rewarded for fraud! Please continue if you have the will, the spirit, the integrity, the balls, and the mentality to deal with the stress toll which this can take; your doing great, thanks! I also realize that FASB/GAAP is a farse, so you are even more needed than ever (and people like you)!!!!!!!!!! Emergency, we need integrity!

Or put another way garbage in, garbage out

Or put another way,

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

Or maybe this is all is just entropy, where the inflation of retardation in the finance world has resulted in a massive retardation bubble that has expanded beyond infinity:

Re: Said a credit trader in Germany: “It kind of begs the question now, did the Fed cut rates courtesy of a rogue trader at SocGen having to close out a massive position and sending the stock market into turmoil?”

This time around it’s a lot harder to see any potential for profit. The banks might as well take their writedowns now. And Buffett took a good long look and then decided to start his own rival company instead.

It’s also important to understand the insurance regulator’s incentives. For him personally, it’s worth pursuing even if there were almost no chance whatsoever of success. How many people knew his name before all this, but know it now? His future ambitions in the sphere of politics or the financial industry can only be enhanced — and if by any chance this lottery ticket pays off, the sky’s the limit. It’s just a slight twist on the career path of Giuliani and Spitzer.

I believe the state insurance commissioners have broad regulatory powers to step in and redirect all the cash flow to protect the policyholders, and leave the holding company to twist in the wind. The folks who recently bought the notes at 14% may not have realized what they were getting themselves into.

A distinct muni bond category simply doesn’t exist in other countries, because there is no comparable tax-free treatment. There’s nothing wrong with back-to-basics bond insurance as a business — after all, Warren Buffett himself is getting into it. It’s just the recent toxic exotic stuff that MBIA and Ambac got in trouble over.

I’m not up on the competence of the Wisconsin regulator. One thing Wisconsin does have going for it is that they still have a number of regulators on their staff that worked through the MGIC insolvency in the 1980s. That counts for something here, even though reconciling Ambac is a quantum leap of difficulty beyond MGIC in the 1980s.

The expansion to the money supply because of loose credit is beyond comprehension. This kind of plan goes through expect a far greater correction to consumer prices to reflect the current level of money supply.