Fitch's Play's the Rating Game

Yesterday, Moody's comments were noted.

As previously mentioned: “Rest assured, the ratings agencies have been told to put on a dunce cap, sit in a corner and act like Tommy (deaf, dumb & blind).

As long as the Fed is holding large amounts of ABCP or MBS, there will be very limited debt rating downgrades...

From David Einhorn: “"In early September, a senior Moody's executive at a small private dinner sponsored by one of the brokerage firms:

"Moody's would never lower the credit ratings of a financial guarantor, because that would put the guarantors, out of business."

In today's WSJ: "If a big guarantee company lost its rating, hundreds of billions of dollars' worth of debt securities could suffer downgrades."

Today, CIFG, a financial guarantee company, will get $1.5 billion in fresh capital from controlling shareholders of its French parent, Natixis SA,

to protect its endangered triple-A credit rating,

Natixis SA's bond-insurance unit, CIFG Guaranty, will be taken over by the French bank's controlling shareholders in a $1.5 billion rescue.

Fitch affirmed CIFG's AAA rating after the announcement today, providing relief to the holders of $85 billion of bonds insured by the company.

FGIC, the insurer for $315 billion of bonds, may be the next bond guarantor to be rescued by its parents.

FGIC, controlled by PMI Group Inc., Blackstone Group LP, and Cypress Group, has at most three weeks to show it has enough capital to deserve a AAA grade, Fitch said.

The Nattering One suspects the credo to be: "No Guarantor left behind."

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