Some good economic news

This is a rare piece of good news for the economy:

Bond-insurer MBIA Inc. said it boosted the size of a share offering to $1 billion from $750 million after it was oversubscribed by investors.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based company said it priced 82,304,527 shares of common stock at $12.15 a share to raise $1 billion. The offering is larger than its previously announced $750 million share issue and is likely to be greeted positively by analysts and investors who have been worried that the company will lose its coveted AAA credit rating.

I have no idea whether this will be enough to head off the downgrade, but a downgrade in MBIA's rating would have reverberations throughout the financial markets, since the bonds it insures would then lose their ratings, and the financial institutions that own those bonds would have to write down their holdings.

[Full disclosure. I own a few hundred shares of MBIA, which I purchased at at $60.00.]