MBIA Inc. (MBI) announced today that it has established a new U.S. public finance financial guarantee insurance company, giving the bond insurer a new entity dedicated exclusively to the U.S. public finance market. The move is part of the company's goal to separate its municipal business from its structured finance business.

Investors obviously liked the move as MBI is the best-performing S&P 500 company today, with shares surging 35%.

Specifically, MBI transferred stock of MBIA Insurance Corp. of Illinois to a newly established intermediate holding company dubbed National Public Finance Guarantee Corporation. It will operate as a subsidiary of MBIA Corp.

"We believe this new business model will not only preserve the interests of both our public finance and structured finance policyholders and enhance the value for our shareholders, but will benefit the U.S. public finance markets as well," stated MBI CEO Jay Brown.

While the surge in

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Give us Madoff! Give us Madoff!  “Oil rises to $39 on Bernanke comments…”  “Asian stocks rise after Bernanke remarks…” When they turned out the lights and closed the doors in New York last night, the Dow had lost 25 points and oil had gone down to $37. But this morning, investors seem to be feeling better about things. What did Bernanke say to bring about the turnaround?

We find the report on the front page of the International Herald Tribune:

“More capital injections and guarantees may become necessary to ensure stability and the normalization of credit markets,” said the main man at the Fed, speaking to an audience at the London School of Economics.

He went on to say that he didn’t necessarily like bailing out Wall Street, but it “appears unavoidable.”

Nothing particularly exciting about that. But then we turn to page 12:

“Bernanke warns that bigger bailouts needed around the world,” is the

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by Edward Hugh: Barlecona br /br /br /Only one thing is really clear about the Germany economy at the present time, and that is that it is shrinking rapidly. In fact it contracted far more than most analysts and observers expected in the third quarter (although I, for one, a href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/euro-monitor/252923/what_is_the_recession_risk_for_the_german_economy"was not especially surprised/a), entering what now appears to be its worst recession in at least 12 years as both exports and domestic spending continue to fall. German gross domestic product in Q3 dropped by a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent from the second quarter, when it fell by a quarterly 0.4 percent, according to revised data from the Federal Statistics Office. The Germany economy last had a two quarter contraction of this magnitude back in 1996.br /br /br /pa href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SRwqCqomolI/AAAAAAAALd8/hUkBJVBg6wg/s1600-h/GDP+y-o-y.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5268131889409335890" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 198px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SRwqCqomolI/AAAAAAAALd8/hUkBJVBg6wg/s320/GDP+y-o-y.png" border="0" //abr /br ...

Only one thing is really clear about the Germany economy at the present time, and that is that it is shrinking rapidly. In fact it contracted far more than most analysts and observers expected in the third quarter (although I, for one, a href="http://www.rgemonitor.com/euro-monitor/252923/what_is_the_recession_risk_for_the_german_economy"was not especially surprised/a), entering what now appears to be its worst recession in at least 12 years as both exports and domestic spending continue to fall. German gross domestic product in Q3 dropped by a seasonally adjusted 0.5 percent from the second quarter, when it fell by a quarterly 0.4 percent, according to revised data from the Federal Statistics Office. The Germany economy last had a two quarter contraction of this magnitude back in 1996.br /br /pa href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SRwqCqomolI/AAAAAAAALd8/hUkBJVBg6wg/s1600-h/GDP+y-o-y.png"img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5268131889409335890" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 198px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_ngczZkrw340/SRwqCqomolI/AAAAAAAALd8/hUkBJVBg6wg/s320/GDP+y-o-y.png" border="0" //abr /br /And all the signs are that the fourth ...