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Welcome to interest.co.nz's morning briefing of what's news here and around the world. Everything you need to start the day in 90 seconds at 9'oclock.... Starting nowWith news overnight that the world's most respected investor Warren Buffett has offered to buy the right to insure bond offerings from American local governments.This gave Wall St a boost. That's because the current insurers of these bonds are in deep trouble because of heavy losses they made insuring more complicated bonds and derivatives linked to sub prime mortgages.Wall St was worried the big bond insurers MBIA, Ambac and FGIC would lose their AAA credit ratings, which would force banks to slash as much as $200 billion off the value of bonds they hold. We'll see how much of a bailout this is. Buffett is a canny investor and doesn't buy anything expensively. Some are already saying the price he wants to charge these governments to insure these bonds is too high and that the bond insurers won't accept the offer.Back at home,St Laurence Property and Finance has announced it wants to raise $24.4 million to fund a couple of developments and have cash on hand to repay around $8 million of debentures that mature in April.St Laurence executive chairman and controlling shareholder Kevin Podmore says St Laurance has the cash on hand to repay the debentures, but wants to push ahead with the office building developments in Wellington.Elsewhere, liquidators have been appointed to two companies associated with Blue Chip Investments. The companies collected rent for managed apartments for investors who bought apartments in Auckland via Blue Chip.That was 90 seconds at 9 o'clock. I'm Bernard Hickey for interest.co.nz