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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (75232)	2/25/2008 6:33:18 PM
From: dave9	Respond to of 116555

Standard & Poor is not just in bed occasionally with those insurers. S&P is having their baby. Standard & Poor's managing director David Tesher was one of the key speakers at CDO World 2007. So was Mr Stephen Anderberg, Director in Structured Finance Rating Milbert Bentham, Director, director in Structured Finance Ratings. Mr Kenneth Cheng, Director, Mr Alfredo de Diego Arozamena, Director, yada, yada, yada; all SnP people. terrapinn.com I don't expect that link to last.

To: mishedlo who wrote (75232)	2/25/2008 6:53:32 PM
From: SouthFloridaGuy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

The ratings agency are dead for a long-time. Whatever credibility they had - and it wasn't much - has been shot. If I were Warren Buffet, maybe the next move is to start my own agency and downgrade Ambac and MBIA. I had been holding on to the hope that free-market forces would take hold and America would show the world why we are different, why we are better. We are not. And what's worse is that we are hypocrites to the nth degree. At least when you invest in an Emerging Market, you know it's corrupt. If I were a foreign investor, I would begin to apply a pretty decent sized risk-premium to U.S. assets (clearly that has already been happening in non-risk free assets). The secondary question, I guess, is to what? In the past, risk premiums were always against U.S. treasuries. Perhaps a global interest rate? I have no idea anymore. Clearly the "Banks" are going to have to dip to the Sovereign Wealth Fund again when structured credit defaults begin to eat away at the paltry $3 billion. Then what? What the banks are doing is akin to doubling down on 17 when the dealer shows an Ace.