jpmorgan warnns about anz first wave, page-20

lol well thats the point we didn't know about the ACA Capital exposure till it was downgraded to from AAA to CCC, ANZ accounting rules allow they must provision , half the banking market is in the same position, the problem is the credit rating down grades are lagging the actual bond performance, if you actually track the bond performance and look at the ratings a good many of the ACA are performing like CCC even though Fitch and S&P are still rating them AAA

ANZ only confessed its exposure to ACA when the rating was downgraded, if you can find an actual statement from ANZ that says they dont have further monoline exposure then point to it because i cant :) it doesn't exist

the only material exposure that ANZ are bound to expose is when under its derivative accounting rules a counter party falls below investment grade, that hasn't happened yet so that wont happen until one of them has their ratings down graded to that level, so a non confirmation is not a positive confirmation by default as you suggest

Mike Smiths positive outlook on the last transcript was about the institutional bank turn around, some good growth in Asia and a clean domestic credit portfolio, his increases in lending we on lower rates with higher costs funds , so my prediction is his second half is going to look pretty poor

as he said "there has been very little evidence of stress working its way across the consumer credit portfolio"

my bet is hes a poor economic sage and he thought the worst of the credit crisis was behind him, so he thought it was ok to come out confident when the last results were released, this time around the results are going to look like a dogs breakfast, there will be credit deterioration in personal , inst banking will fall back from its turnaround and he has to somehow explain his way through the Opes mine field

if there is further turn downs in global credit markets he will looking like a crossing guard with cement shoes :)

remember one of the contrarian indicators of trouble in the banking segment is a CEO who insists all is well, I reckon he sold the last result way to hard for the risks that were heading around the corner and thats either a sign he was fearing what knew and was trying to hide it or that he just didn't realize what global credit risks lay ahead