Coming soon to Wall Street cinemas: "Honey, I Shrunk the Bonus," plus special matinee screenings of the Tom Wolfe classic "Bonfire of the Vanities."

For anyone who hasn't changed jobs recently enough to have secured a guarantee from his or her employer, the prospects of a decent payday in the next bonus round are about as secure as the AAA rating on a collateralised debt obligation.

It won't matter that your particular part of the business shot out the lights last year.

There's just no way to generate enough profit to backfill the holes in the balance sheet at a time when the board is inclined to adopt a "kitchen sink" approach to its quarterly results.

As the year drags on, more and more regions of the global financial map are sinking into the quagmire of distrust, downgrade and destabilisation.

Even the stock market is finally noticing that we're not in Kansas any more and Dorothy might have to do more than click her heels three times to get home.

US bond insurers, also known as monolines, are the latest financial institutions pinging the radar screen.

Morgan Stanley analyst Ken Zerbe last week questioned the viability of the industry amid rising loan defaults, predicting losses of as much $3.5 billion for Ambac Financial Group, the world's second-biggest insurer, and $2 billion for MBIA, the biggest.

Ambac, whose shares have lost almost 70 percent of their value this year, responded this week by saying there are "many misconceptions" about its finances.

Why do the hairs on the back of my neck stand up whenever financial companies suggest that their critics just don't get it?

If the guy responsible for advising Morgan Stanley clients on the value of Ambac is mistaken, maybe Ambac should take a hard look at the transparency of its business model.

Sean Egan, the fiercely independent managing director of Egan-Jones Rating, said this week that the monolines face "massive losses" in coming months. MBIA could take a hit of more than $20 billion, he said, while Ambac's losses might reach $4.3 billion.

Fitch Ratings has started a six-week study into whether the deterioration in CDO creditworthiness means some of the bond insurers no longer qualify for AAA ratings.

Companies that don't make the grade will have a month to raise more capital and shore up their grades, Fitch said.

All I can say is, good luck to any bond insurer trying to tap the capital markets for additional funding over Christmas.

The monolines have guaranteed more than $1 trillion of bonds sold by US cities and states, along with asset-backed bonds. As things stand, their stamp of approval ensures top ratings for those securities.

That makes the status of the monolines a sensitive issue, both politically and financially.

It has been a feature of this credit crisis that the people closest to particular markets and with the most at stake have often been slower to spot the landmines than outsiders looking in.

Geraud Charpin, UBS AG's London-based head of credit strategy, said in a November 6 research note that "a form of bailout would probably be worked out" if monolines got into trouble.

Later that day, UBS issued what it called a "clarification" of its position.

"The views expressed on monolines were his personal views and were inadvertently included in this report," the bank said in an e-mail. Dominik von Arx, UBS's London spokesman, declined to comment on the reasons for the missive.

Back in July, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told us that the collapse of the subprime mortgage market didn't pose "any threat to the overall economy."

Merrill Lynch & Co. chief executive officer Stan O'Neal said on June 7 "there have been no clear signs it's spilling over into other subsets of the bond market, the fixed-income market and the credit market."

O'Neal was defenestrated by his board, as was Charles Prince, his opposite number at Citigroup.

It's the 21st- century equivalent of being pushed off the ledge — no one jumps these days — albeit with a $161.5 million golden parachute to brake the fall in the case of O'Neal, and about $60 million of cushion for Prince.

"How bad is this financial crisis gonna get?" Michelle Margherita, who plays bass guitar in one of my local bands, asked me in a London pub this week. The collapse of the US subprime mortgage market is turning out to be the exact opposite of self-contained.

It's time to cancel your Audi R8 order and hang on to the Aston Martin for another year.

You might also want to consider spending more time hanging out on Facebook and MySpace; why risk making things worse for yourself by trading and doing deals if you're not likely to get paid for that additional risk?

(Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)