RMBS

Congress wanted to create a large category of high-quality residential mortgages that would be exempt from risk retention and easily securitized – but banking regulators have taken the opposite approach, according to Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga.

Fixed- and one-year adjustable rate mortgage rates set new record lows in the week ending Sept. 8 in response to the flight-to-safety rally that occurred with the stunningly weak employment report and continued sovereign debt induced anxiety in Europe.

In the 1980s Freddie Mac had a marketing campaign The Gnomes Know, touting their expertise in mortgage markets. Now the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has filed a $200 billion lawsuit against 17 of the nation's largest mortgage lenders arguing that during the subprime lending debacle of the last decade the gnomes didn't know!The lawsuits all relate to publicly offered private label subprime MBS purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie mostly from 2005 through 2007. They purchased mostly senior investment grade securities because these not only qualified towards their housing "mission" goals required by Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) "mission regulator," but also because the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, FHFA's predecessor prudential regulator, required only 20% as much capital as for whole loan purchases.

The group of state attorneys general lead by Iowa's Tom Miller have offered the banking industry new settlement terms in their negotiations around the robosigning controversy, according to a Financial Times report.

MBS issuers have long enjoyed an exemption from onerous provisions of the Investment Company Act (ICA) since the start of mortgage securitization in the early 1980s, but all that could change under a new proposal being weighed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Mortgage application declined 4.9% in the week ending Sept. 2 in response to lower refinancing activity.

Frank Byrne was let go last week as UBS' head of structured-products underwriting and origination, 18 months after he was hired to spearhead growth in those areas, according to sources familiar with the situation.

Bank of America Corp.'s plan to eliminate roughly 3,500 jobs this quarter marks just the start of an efficiency drive that could reduce the company's global workforce by about 10%, according to a report in the Charlotte Observer.

A coalition of industry groups is urging Congress to act quickly to maintain the GSE loan limit at $729,750, saying the pending expiration is hurting both home sales and application volume.

When the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) late Friday unveiled its $200 billion lawsuit against investment banking firms that sold faulty MBS to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it also targeted executives who signed the original shelf registration documents on the securities in question.