From denningers blog...( I also saw this Egan guy on CNBC the other day).
Finally, this afternoon Egan-Jones came on CNBC and told the truth about the monoline insurers - they need $30 billion EACH to be "AAA" credit quality. Who is Egan-Jones? A ratings agency NOT PAID BY THE ISSUER, who by the way, has a NINETY FIVE PERCENT accuracy rate in their ratings. They're the ones who blew the whistle on ENRON and MCI, among others. Ignore them at your peril - they are very rarely wrong.
So if the government was gonna "bail" them ALL out to maintain AAA ratings, they would need to pull about 200 billion out of their you know what. What a nice precedent that would be, eh?!
By the way, check out the behavior of housing.
1) FED slashed rates, yet the 30 yr fixed mortgage DID NOT MOVE
2) Bad combo: Negative savings rate and Falling home prices. This will even deny thousands the ability to refinance, because they cannot roll the closing costs into their new loan, and, they do not have enough for a down payment!
3) Housing sales are falling, not only that, but accelerating...this, in the face of lower rates and falling home prices? NOT GOOD.
4) Lending standards are getting much tougher, denying many loans in the first place.
Again, credit is the lifes blood of the US economy. And don't think other skeletons are not gonna get uncovered as this whole credit issue unfolds. It will just make it worse and worse. Needless to say, especially with the new TSP limited transfer rules, I'm gonna err on the side of being in G. I'm sure the market will go up and down for a while, but I expect that this more like 2000 and not 1998.
side note: in 1998, we went down 21% over a 1.5 month period, then rebounded 10% over a 1 month period, before retesting the lows, and then resuming the bull. The analogy for today would be the October high, then the NOVEMBER LOWS, which we not only retested but blew through. The tech bubble was crazy, but this credit deal, ESPECIALLY if you think about possible inflation in the near future, is a terminal illness which could lead to a depression. Reality check! Oil is still around 90 a barrel folks. Commodities and food are continuing to rise. That is inflation. God forbid we get another terrorist attack and a Dem in office who is going to RAISE taxes?