"God I Hope You're Wrong"

Ambac, MBIA Outlook Lowered by S&P, ACA Cut to CCC (Update6): “The ratings outlook for MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc., the world's largest bond insurers, was lowered to negative by Standard & Poor's, raising the specter of more writedowns for the companies' investment- bank clients.

S&P also cut its A rating on ACA Financial Guaranty Corp. to CCC, suggesting potential default. Toronto-based Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce said today it may have $2 billion of writedowns on U.S. subprime mortgage securities it insured through ACA.”

MAKE DAMN SURE YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT JUST HAPPENED AND WHAT THE NEAR RUN CONSEQUENCES WILL BE. I cannot stress this enough.

To best understand, in plain English, what these downgrades mean read: Requiem For The American Investment Bank from the Market Ticker.

To go from plain English to a little more sophistication read: Financial Day of Reckoning Approaches from Mish’s.

“God I hope you’re wrong.” –Chief Risk Officer at a major investment bank after J. Kyle Bass, a hedge fund manager, presented his case for a MASSIVE bet on the occurrence of a housing market meltdown.

(From Calculated Risk) Here is the S&P Report: Detailed Results Of Subprime Stress Test Of Financial Guarantors Some excerpts from the company specific comments:

Ambac Assurance Corp.
We affirmed the 'AAA' financial strength and financial enhancement ratings of Ambac Assurance and the 'AA' debt ratings of Ambac Financial Group, Inc. but the outlooks have been changed to negative. ...

CIFG Financial Guaranty
We have affirmed the 'AAA' financial strength rating of CIFG and the outlook remains negative. ...

Financial Guaranty Insurance Co.
The ratings of FGIC and FGIC Corp. are placed on CreditWatch with negative implications. Our most recent analysis of the company's non-prime RMBS and CDO of ABS exposure indicates a level of losses which would result in its capital position falling below our 'AAA' requirements. ...

MBIA Insurance Corporation
The outlook on MBIA and MBIA Inc.'s financial strength and debt ratings is changed to negative and their ratings affirmed. The outlook change is warranted because of the absolute size of stress scenario losses relative to the adjusted capital cushion of $2.75 billion. ...

XL Capital Assurance Inc./XL Financial Assurance Ltd.
We revised the outlook on XLCA, XLFA, and Security Capital Assurance Ltd.'s financial strength and debt ratings to negative, while affirming the respective ratings. ...

ACA Financial Guaranty Corp.
The financial strength and financial enhancement ratings on ACA are lowered to 'CCC' and placed on CreditWatch Developing. The lower rating reflects the substantial excess-of-modeled stress test losses of nearly $2.2 billion over the company's adjusted capital cushion at Dec. 31, 2007 of approximately $650 million. While ACA has been diligently working to address contingent liquidity concerns, it has not focused significantly on raising additional capital. Lower new business activity during this period of rating uncertainty is a positive from a capital adequacy standpoint but the incremental improvement is not sufficient to close the gap between stress losses and the capital cushion. The magnitude of the gap is large enough to create significant doubt that the company could possibly access sufficient hard capital resources to resolve the problem. CreditWatch Developing acknowledges the possibility that the company may be able to modify its obligations to its counterparties but reflects the real possibility that the counterparties will require the company to post significant collateral going forward.

Remember these names. Ambac, CIFG, FGIC, MBIA, XLCA. They will be in the news again soon… and it will be market moving.