Credit rating services need to do a much better job in the mortgage- and asset-backed securities market, and regulators need to make sure investors are diligent in looking beyond the ratings in their assessments of complex financial instruments...
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Federal Reserve moves over the past week to improve liquidity in the credit markets were enthusiastically embraced by Wall Street, and are regarded as a net benefit to an MBS market that has been starved for good news. The Fed late last week increased the amounts...
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The spread between agency MBS and Treasury bonds hit a staggering 23-year high last week, forcing the Federal Reserve to ride to the rescue. While the move provided a slight boost to MBS prices, analysts expect a prolonged slump for the once seemingly...
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MBS investors in coming weeks will get their first look at new products featuring jumbo loans packaged in agency securities, with yields expected to come in roughly half a point higher than comparable pools of standard agency loans. Fannie Mae and Freddie...
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While lawmakers on Capitol Hill and other policymakers struggle to help the struggling mort-gage and credit markets, the real key to a sustainable long-term recovery may depend more on home prices stabilizing and eventually rebounding on the local...
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Thrift institutions held $204.50 billion of mortgage securities in their portfolios at the end of 2007, the industry’s biggest exposure to the market since just before its meltdown in the late 1980s. Thrift MBS holdings jumped 22 percent... [Includes two charts]
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Countrywide Financial’s litigation nightmare worsened as the Federal Bureau of Investigation began a probe of the ailing lender’s role in the collapse of nonprime collateral and subsequent massive losses of investors in subprime MBS. The FBI neither confirmed nor...
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A total of $6.635 trillion of residential mortgage-backed securities was outstanding at the end of 2007 as the market continued to grow despite slumping new production and increasing defaults. Total MBS outstanding rose 10.7 percent in... [Includes one chart]
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