ratings agencies

I have really started to dislike municipal bonds as an asset class. They have seen a huge rally along with almost every other financial asset but the underlying fundamentals are weak because of financial distress at states and…

Bond insurer Ambac Financial has warned bankruptcy is a distinct possibility, sending its shares plummeting more than 30% today. What is intriguing about this pending bankruptcy is how this company escaped bankruptcy in 2008, was…

Why aren’t more municipal bonds being downgraded by the ratings agencies Fitch, Moody’s and S&P?  If you look at sovereign debt in revenue-constrained countries like Greece, Portugal or Ireland, the ratings agencies are issuing…

Fitch, the credit rating agency, has just downgraded the sovereign debt ratings for the Republic of Ireland from AA+ to AA-.  That is two notches and is proof-positive that the ratings agencies are worried about the hole in Dublin’s…

Today, Moody’s warned that Iceland, Latvia and Hungary were stabilizing but that their economies remained fragile. The problem is high debt levels, which is restraining consumer spending. Recovery in the Eurozone has been the main aid to…

Both Latvia’s and Estonia’s debt ratings were downgraded by Standard and Poors.  Estonia was cut from A to A-, while Latvia was cut to BB+ to BB - its considered high yield securities aka junk bonds. This should come as no surprise as…

Reuters is reporting that the ratings agencies are about to get into some serious legal problems.  You see,during the bubble years, the ratings agencies gave a gold-standard AAA rating to what now seems to be dubious investment…

The Online Merriam-Webster Dictionary describes alchemy as “a power or process of transforming something common into something special” or “aiming to achieve the transmutation of the base metals into gold.”  Well, it seems Morgan…

PIMCO’s founder Bill Gross is out with his latest monthly missive.  It makes for interesting reading, especiallyregarding the captains of finance and their desire to stay rich using other people’s money. I remember as a child my…

The first time I wrote about the Baltics was back in August in a post entitled, "Are the Baltics the new Argentina?." Since then, things have gotten progressively worse and the Baltics are clearly in Depression with Latvia leading the way…