Monoline datapoint of the day

I said earlier I rarely do this and here I go again posting another blogger's entire article. This is because he knows things most of us don't. K?

Bloomberg reports:

Ambac, MBIA Inc. and Assured Guaranty, the three largest bond insurers, have set aside 0.04 percent of the total public finance debt they insure, or $520 million, to pay claims on municipal securities, according to regulatory filings by the companies.

No, that’s not a misprint: the claims-paying reserves are 4 basis points of the total quantity of municipal bonds insured. What’s more, the market capitalization of all three monolines combined is less than $5 billion; the amount of municipal bonds insured, by contrast, is well over $1 trillion.

What could possibly go wrong?

Even I can see that's equivalent to taking off to Europe for a week with $10 in your pocket and a couple hundred in the ol' ATM with the idea you'll not need any more than that.

Here come 3 more bailouts?

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Note: Headline links to source.

Serial blogging

I'm with Sean-Paul Kelley (the Agonist) who's with Paul Krugman who's with Simon Johnson who's with Bloomberg.

President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay.

The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.”

“I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.”

This goes far beyon blue dog Democrat speak.

And later in the article is this fuckingly Hilarious item:

Obama sought to combat perceptions that his administration is anti-business and trumpeted the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies.

Please remind me. The people of what republic voted Obama into office to help them; like with real health care reform, a few jobs for the chronically unemployed, preventing homelessness, putting an end to Wall Street and bankster rapes of the masses?