Economics Update

I missed this when it was announced late Friday afternoon, but two moremonoliners hit junk status, FGIC and XL Capital and XL Financial.

I wonder when all of the monoliners will be junk rated, and I also wonder why this is not true now.

This means more than just that these insurers can no longer realistically write policies. These downgrades come with significant penalties, as MBIA's statement that's it downgrade will force it to make $4.7 billion in payments to creditors.

When they got downgraded, the terms of their loans changed.

In energy we have oil up despite the Saudi meeting, and retail gas prices falling. Hopefully this will bring a few months of stability at the pump.

The dollar strengthened, largely on crappy growth in the Euro zone, which would suggest that the ECB will hold off rate hikes for a while.

In real estate, we have Lehman predicting more losses for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which should come as no surprise at all.

After when ¼ of Bay Area home sales in May had been in foreclosure, and statewide home sales hit a 13-year low, it's not like there will be a whole bunch of players making money.

It's why George W. Bush's ownership is becoming a Pwnership society, with home ownership falling to below where it was when he announced the initiative to get people to buy houses.

BTW, if you think that this won't effect you, you are wrong. We now have an estimate of properties falling by $1.46 Trillion, which, by my quick envelope calculation, means that state and local governments are looking at revenue shortfalls on property taxes on the order of $1.5 billion/month.