Securitization

Although President Obama Thursday night made a slight reference to a government-backed refi plan for troubled mortgagors, the effort appears to be temporarily stalled over concerns about what effect it would have on both MBS investors and the megabanks, according to advisors and trade group sources who claim to have knowledge of the program.

Fitch Ratings submitted its comment letter in response to the Securities and Exchange Commission's Solicitation of Comment to Assist in Study on Assigned Credit Ratings, which is required by Section 939F of the Dodd-Frank Act.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last week issued a concept release that reexamines the ability of REITs to use an exclusion under the Investment Company Act of 1940.

Bond insurer Assured Guaranty has a bone to pick with Standard & Poor's over the rating agency's new bond insurance rating criteria.

The massive lawsuits that the federal government brought last week against many of the largest U.S. and global banks underscore the deepening tension within the executive branch with regard to housing.

Ginnie Mae president Ted Tozer has a problem and it goes like this: over the past 18 months the agency has approved 60 new firms to issue government-backed MBS, but few are actually issuing.

Freddie Mac said it will not dramatically discount its backlog of foreclosed homes, arguing that such steep price cuts could destroy the housing market.

State Street Corp. has launched a derivatives clearing service, complete with a swaps clearing platform.

Americans are expressing their highest levels of pessimism regarding the housing market and the economy in general, according to Fannie Mae's August National Housing Survey.

Bank of America Corp.'s executive shuffle this week supports what the beleaguered Charlotte conglomerate has been telling investors for weeks: It will keep selling unwanted bits of the company and hold on to major business units.

Highland Capital Management has put its European CLO business back up for sale after taking it off the block earlier this year, according to Bloomberg.

The American Securitization Forum (ASF) released a statement today expressing its dissapointment after the Chicago City Council approved an ordinance on vacant homes.

Clear Capital reported a 4% quarter-over-quarter increase in home prices through the end of August, but the firm is projecting a bumpy future for the fall and winter seasons.

As if there were not enough considerations for investors sizing up the many distressed MBS still out there, it looks now like they should also take into account growing momentum in municipal efforts to get securities trusts and servicers to pay for distressed property upkeep or face fines.

Overall, the August prepayment report is viewed as uneventful for the most part since it did not reflect the sharp drop in mortgage rates that occurred beginning in August.

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.

Last December, when Carlyle Group took over four CLOs previously managed by Mizuho Alternative Investment, it didn’t just get the management contracts; it also acquired equity in these deals.