New issuance of non-mortgage ABS more than doubled during the second quarter of this year as U.S. government programs designed to shore up the market helped facilitate huge increases in most sectors of the market. A total of $49.30 billion of non-mortgage ABS were issued during the second quarter, up 121 percent from the first three months of... [Includes three charts]
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President Obama this week sent draft legislation to Capitol Hill aimed at reducing conflicts of interest at credit rating agencies, improving the transparency of ratings, and strengthening the Securities and Exchange Commission’s supervision of these firms. The draft legislation, the “Investor Protection Act of 2009,” is part of the administration’s push to reform the credit rating...
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Major government efforts to pump liquidity into the commercial MBS market are beginning to have noticeable impacts for investors and issuers, as tightening spreads and a flurry of CMBS re-securitizations have come to market in recent weeks. Fitch Ratings gave a “stable outlook” to three separate transactions this month: a Banc of America re-securitization of nine...
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Fannie Mae inadvertently included some loans that had already been liquidated in its new portfolio securitization program, a mistake that will cause a spurt of principal payments in the first month cash flows on the MBS. The government-sponsored enterprise said some liquidated loan balances and partial curtailments that had been made in April were mistakenly included in some May portfolio...
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The Federal Reserve’s gross purchases of agency MBS since the beginning of the year topped the $1 trillion mark this week, although the central bank still has plenty of elbow room to continue providing liquidity to the MBS market. The Fed has purchased a total of $1.001 trillion of agency MBS since the agency launched its liquidity program late in 2008... [Includes one chart]
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American International Group’s consumer lending unit, losing access to some of its usual sources of funding and moving to pay down some debt, is selling off approximately $1.6 billion of mortgage-backed securities at a very deep discount to Credit Suisse and to Private National Mortgage Acceptance Co., a newly formed entity. American General Finance Corp., AIG’s subprime business...
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MBS investors who are trying to recover their losses may find help in a new service that will help them gain access to loan files. Getting lenders to repurchase their soured loans out of a securitized mortgage pool is a complex and frustrating process. But the Barrent Group, which helps MBS investors exercise their...
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