New issuance of agency MBS fell by 10.2 percent in August as the securitization surge from heavy mortgage refinance activity earlier this year continued to lose momentum. A total of $150.45 billion of new agency MBS were issued last month, the lowest level since April. That raised year-to-date volume to $1.247 trillion, up 43.8 percent from the first... [Includes one chart and one graph]
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Several aspects of a court’s decision to remand a class-action lawsuit against Countrywide Financial could have interesting repercussions for investors. The decision, passed down in mid-August, denied Countrywide’s request to have the case moved to federal court after the judge ruled that neither the Truth in Lending Act nor the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 provide a...
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Wall Street is urging the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to allow all qualified securitization and participation transactions to continue to have safe-harbor protections under the agency’s “securitization rule” following the implementation of new consolidation accounting standards. In a recent letter, the American Securitization Forum warned that implementation of the Financial...
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It’s unclear when Congress and the Obama administration will get around to resolving the conservatorship status of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but there’s a good chance that the final solution will involve breaking the government-sponsored enterprises and the functions they serve into smaller parts. The Mortgage Bankers Association has released a proposal that would deconstruct the GSEs...
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Federal Home Loan Bank investments in Ginnie Mae MBS jumped 117.1 percent in the second quarter, reaching $1.84 billion, a new record level of activity at a time when the system was scaling back its MBS holdings. The 12 FHLBanks held a combined $152.83 billion of mortgage securities on their books in the second quarter, down 5.4 percent from the previous period... [Includes one chart]
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Federal thrift and banking regulators are planning to propose rules to align financial institutions’ regulatory capital requirements to their actual exposures, particularly risks that may arise from the implementation of new consolidation rules on currently off-balance sheet mortgage securitizations. Published in the Aug. 26 Federal Register, the agency notice seeks comments on draft rules...
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