The born again financiers

Sir Aline van Duyn in her report "Banks spend $500m on Ambac shares" March 8, quotes Michael Callen the chief executive of Ambac saying that "The market gods were totally against us"; which must be very humbling to say for a member of a profession that so recently believed themselves to be the gods of the market.

That said the operation also begs the answer for how the banks are going to account in their books for the registry of what basically amounts to an expense in order to avoid having to expense even larger losses if the credit risk insurance provided by Ambac is shown to be worth less than a prime rating.