I don’t feel like talking about health care reform other than to say that Jim Cramer says this will lead us into double-dip recession and he’s generally a contrarian indicator. So I’ll talk about the Fed and AIG instead. Hey, look, up in the sky! Bad assets! Not the first time something insured by AIG probably catches a downgrade:

March 19 (Bloomberg) — The largest collateralized debt obligations insured by American International Group Inc. and taken over by the Federal Reserve as part of AIG’s bailout may be downgraded by Moody’s Investors Service. The credit-ratings firm put $7.88 billion of slices of the two CDOs, underwritten by Deutsche Bank AG, under review because of downgrades to the underlying commercial-mortgage securities, New York-based Moody’s said today in a statement. The CDOs — MAX CMBS I Ltd. Series 2007-1 and Series 2008-1 — were created in October 2007 and June 2008, respectively, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

AIG provided protection against defaults to Deutsche Bank on $7.5 billion of the CDOs’ portions with top ratings, among the $62.1 billion of CDOs assumed by a Fed-funded vehicle, according to disclosures from the insurance company. The value of those obligations had declined by $3.5 billion at the time the Fed bought the securities and placed them in Maiden Lane III as part of transactions to unwind AIG positions agreed to in November 2008, a regulatory filing showed. AIG was receiving a “liquidity benefit” from Deutsche Bank’s financing of positions in CDOs in deals including ones called “Project Max,” according to a BlackRock Inc. presentation dated Nov. 5, 2008…

When it comes to CMBS being downgraded, I am tempted to flag it sarcastically as breaking news, because what else is new. However, it’s frustrating because it means the Fed, which lately likes to come out and talk almost with tentative optimism, is holding assets that are still weakening. (And I wish stories like this came with a “liquidity benefit,” preferably in the form of scotch.)