Bill Ackman of Pershing Square is getting a lot of attention lately for his “timely” shorting and questioning of the risks with the monolines (MBIA and Ambac.) The reality is that Bill has been saying this stuff for many years - since 2002 actually. Check out this article from 2005. It’s fun reading and it’s amazingly sickening. While Bill was hammering away and making his case for the dangers with monolines and more importantly, the ratings agencies, regulators did nothing. Politicians did nothing. Investors spent more time arguing that he was wrong than protecting against the possibility he was right. Since 2002 when Bill started shorting this group, MBI mostly traded between $50 and $75. This week it had a low of $9. For much of that same time, the mess we are in today was being formed and expanded exponentially - subprime, CDOs, ratings agency conflicts - all of it. Ackman was right then, he is right now. We did nothing then, what will we do now?