August 8th two subsidiaries of MBIA, an American insurer, sued nine Wall Street firms,

which briefly played a starring role in the financial crisis of 2008, are, though hardly full of life, still kicking.

The industry sprang up in the 1970s, first focusing on municipal debt and later branching out into structured products like mortgage securities.

For a few weeks in 2008 the previously obscure monolines—the biggest of which were MBIA and New York-based Ambac—became front-page news as fears spread that they might be unable to pay claims on hundreds of billions of dollars of securitised debt.Rating agencies responded by downgrading monolines' own debt.

MBIA avoided going bust but is a shadow of its former self. Both firms remain in run-off,meaning they cannot write new policies, but have big books of existing business.These days, most new policies are written by either Bermuda's Assured Guaranty or New York-based Build America Mutual.

The monolines had hoped that less-ravaged municipal bonds would shore them up.But there too volume tumbled as issuance dwindled and interest rates fell, eroding margins.

Josh Esterov of CreditSights, a research firm, reckons the muni-insurance business is a tenth of its pre-crisis size.