The "AAA" financial strength rating is crucial to bond insurers because they effectively transfer their ratings to bond issuers.
Fitch Ratings cut FGIC's financial strength rating Wednesday to double-A from triple-A, and it did the same to Ambac earlier this month.
On Friday Ambac saw its crucial financial strength rating cut to "AA" from "AAA" and the bond insurer's plight is likely to have far-flung effects.
The company is struggling to hold on to the top financial-strength rating, as its capital position is severely strained by exposure to subprime mortgage securities that have deteriorated in value, triggering the possibility that Ambac and other bond insurers will have to pay out on the policies they wrote.
Late Wednesday, Moody's Investors Service said it might downgrade Ambac's all-important triple-A financial-strength credit rating after the company forecast significantly higher-than-expected losses from insuring credit derivatives, many of them tied to subprime mortgages.
Late Wednesday, Moody's Investors Service said it might downgrade Ambac's (nyse: ABK - news - people ) all-important triple-A financial-strength credit rating after the company forecast significantly higher-than-expected losses from insuring credit derivatives, many of them tied to subprime mortgages.
Especially galling to Marshall is any suggestion that Kansas or Kansas State might weaken their strength-of-schedule rating by playing Wichita State every year.
Moody's placed Sony's long-term credit rating under review for a possible downgrade, citing the yen's strength, weak demand and "structural challenges" at the onetime king of consumer electronics.
It is widely believed that using guarantees to increase the firepower of the EFSF in either of these ways would impose so much additional strain on France's public-sector balance sheet that France is likely to lose its cherished AAA rating - which would then make the eurozone even more dependent on the financial strength of Germany.
Moody's warned that it may change its "stable" outlook on the rating to "negative" in the coming months, saying that the government's financial strength "has weakened".
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