CORRECT: Municipal Bonds Weaken As S&P Announces Widespread Downgrades(11,000+ muni bonds?)

WSJ ^ | 08/09/11 | Michael Aneiro

[TigerLikesRooster]

CORRECT: Municipal Bonds Weaken As S&P Announces Widespread Downgrades

By Michael Aneiro

Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The municipal bond market weakened Tuesday after Standard and Poor's downgraded more than 11,000 public finance issues to keep them in line with its newly lowered rating on federal government debt.

S&P said it had lowered to double-A plus from triple-A the ratings on certain public finance debt issues linked to the federal government, matching the downgrade it applied to U.S. government debt last Friday.

While the number of issues affected is large, it covers less than 1% of the estimated 1.2 million outstanding debt issues in the $2.9 trillion municipal bond market.

The downgrades applied to a variety of debt linked to the federal government, including pre-refunded bonds backed by escrowed Treasury notes, public finance housing authority issuers, and public finance debt issues with mortgage insurance from the Federal Housing Administration and mortgage revenue invested in short-term instruments guaranteed by the U.S. government.

[TigerLikesRooster]

P!

[Texas Fossil]

S&P Motives?

The owner of S&P is McGraw Hill.

Note this:

—

Pre-Marketing: S&P for sale?

http://www.businessbrokerjournal.com/blog/pre-marketing-sp-for-sale

“Big breakup? Activists put pressure on S&P owner McGraw Hill “

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Denninger is calling for a deflationary depression now:

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=191850

(I can only tolerate about 25% of Denninger. His writing is juvenile at times and he can’t keep his political and social opinions to himself, and he shows how poorly thought out these areas are when he tries to write about them. His economic analysis is usually all right, if you balance it with other sources,such as Mike “Mish” Shedlock, who has been calling for a deflationary cycle for a couple of years and whom Denninger used to mock and ridicule regularly.)

[mlocher]

S&P said it had lowered to double-A plus from triple-A the ratings on certain public finance debt issues linked to the federal government

No surpise here. The real question is how many municipalities that are not linked to the federal government had their ratings decreased. I think that is the real story.

[Orange1998]

GPM, But KD has a huge following. He has good insight but poor timing. I usually fumble through the site for the point and ignore the noise.

[April Lexington]

Looks like Meredith Whitney may be right after all...

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

I know. I do, too. When I started following him a couple of years ago, he stuck to economic and financial analysis, and it was great. Then he started taking himself way too seriously. He’s made a book of his posts. He insults other, good analysts. He uses juvenile name-calling. In short, his ego is getting the better of him and he thinks he should be running the show and if anyone disagrees, they’re stupid.

[dools0007world]

And what did the DOW do on Tuesday amid even more bad economic news? It went up over 200 pts.

I’d like to know who’se buying stocks. I’m certain it’s not small investors like me. Somebody is desperately trying to prop up The Usurping Marxist Onada.

[ken21]

bump.