Ambac
Finance and insurance companyWikipedia
6
MENTIONS
4
EPISODES
4
PODCASTS
Search complete. 6 mentions across 4 episodes found for "Ambac".
Sep 14, 2026
Robert ShillerHOST
In order to make their bonds saleable to the general public, city and state governments go or any regional local governments go to the municipal bond insurer companies.
Robert ShillerHOST
They have names, the big ones are MBIA, AMBAC, FGIC.
Robert ShillerHOST
That's not FDIC, it's not the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, it's FGIC and there are others as well.
Robert ShillerHOST
What these do is they insure the investor against the municipality failing to pay on the bond.
Robert ShillerHOST
They're doing just fine, but people are noticing that their portfolios are going down.
Robert ShillerHOST
Their surplus, statutory surplus, is going down and so we're starting to worry about these companies.
Robert ShillerHOST
Notably, it was January 18, a rating agency, Fitch, lowered AMBAC rated.
Robert ShillerHOST
That was a big news story.
John CostaGUEST
And, and, um, now I, I don't recall exactly, but I think some, uh, some of the Hutton folks at the time, senior, senior officers at Hutton, uh, had a, had a role in the establishment of, uh, FSA when that was starting, uh-
William BlackHOST
FSA being, like AMBAC, MBIA, and then FSA.
William BlackHOST
These are all kind of names that-
John CostaGUEST
Monolines
Jerry Jones Jr.GUEST
But it was, and the good news was we had gotten ahead of how we were selling the stadium and we had a lot of what I'd call contractually obligated income relative to suites and relative to sponsorship, relative to seat options or PSLs as some teams call them.
Jerry Jones Jr.GUEST
We had those contracts locked up and our entire financing package was done through auction rate securities with people like AMBAC.
Jerry Jones Jr.GUEST
And of course, when that recession hit, those were the first things that locked up.
Jerry Jones Jr.GUEST
They literally locked up and our financing was gone.
Rod DubitskyGUEST
Within a few weeks, AIG got out of the market completely and everyone thought, well, that's the end because you lost the primary insurer.
Rod DubitskyGUEST
Well, guess what? NBIA stepped in and AMBAC stepped in.
Rod DubitskyGUEST
where AIG, you know, stepped out.
Rod DubitskyGUEST
So if you have more and more capital coming in, it's very hard to, um, uh, that can keep the bubble going for longer than one can expect.