The Street takes exactly the opposite view of MBIA (MBI) credit default swaps as me.

One hedge fund manager also emailed me with the same possibility – that the GICs issued by MBIA (and MBIA) will impact parent company liquidity through cross default provisions.

As regular readers know, I have no opinion as to whether Ambac (ABK) and MBIA (MBI) are long-term insolvent at the insurance company level. I really have no idea whether losses will be 2 billion or 20 billion. [I am long the stocks as of a few days ago - but I have no opinion about long-term solvency and when I purchased them I thought there was a reasonable chance that the end-game for both companies was zero.]

I believe that losses will be lower than is implied in the market prices of mortgages, but higher than is indicated in the loss reserves of most banks. That is a very wide band – and for detail within that band, you are reading the wrong blog.

Fifth Third (FITB) was a well run bank with a cult following. Now it is up on hard times. I have looked at it numerous times with an eye to buy it, but never purchased. I blogged about that here.

I was so blinded by the past glories of the company that I couldn't even make money shorting it.

The biggest bank in the world is Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS).

Double-take. Hold your breath. Think that John Hempton has lost his mind.

Why not start with big ideas. How do we get a grip on how big the mortgage crisis is and/or will be?

Lets start at the beginning. In December 2006 the mortgage crisis was but a glimmer in the eye of a few maniac short sellers. (I would like to gloat here but given I predicted it, I made not nearly enough money.)

77 Bank (SVSVF.PK) is a regional bank in Sendai (the capital of Miyagi prefecture). The Japanese guys I know think of Sendai as a backwater – a place where the “cool guys” hang out on motorcycles wearing purple clothes. Economically it is just another rapidly aging backwater where the young (other than those that hang out on motor cycles wearing purple clothes) are moving to Tokyo.

The name 77 Bank harks to tradition. During the Meiji restoration the Emperor gave out numbered bank charters. Traditional regional banks still label themselves by the number. www.77.co.jp and many other numbered sites belong to banks.