http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=axU6WEh13K48&refer=home unbelieveable.... where do I sign up?
That's what I wanna know. 20 percent? cmon, where CAN i sign up? If they fail to pay up i'll just take the horns off their trains and sell them on eBay to get my money back.
risk/reward in the market has been out of whack for a very long time now. Credit ratings have finally being exposed for the shame that they are. Investors now have to do their own independent reasearch. mBIA is the biggest joke of them all. Any company which losses money should not be rated above BB. In MBI's case, it shoud be rated C.
Remember, these are very short-term financings. It is an "auction" market like the way the U.S. Treasury finances the government using T-bills every week. The reason why rates were 20% was because that was in the "contract" if you are trying to "roll" IF the banks ( like Goldman and Citi ) backed off, which they did. In order to get around the risk of such a "failed" auction, these municipalities will most likely have to go into the long-term debt market.