The Obama administration this week began laying the conceptual groundwork for its vision of the future of the nation’s mortgage finance system with much support for the function of securitization and strong opposition to much of the current model that seems to privatize gains while pushing losses onto the taxpayer. “The housing finance system clearly cannot continue to...
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A total of 473 amendments to Sen. Christopher Dodd’s regulatory reform legislation have been offered, mostly to water down or kill key provisions, but only a handful relate to securitization issues.In an odd turn of events, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs this week voted on the manager’s amendment of the bill without bringing up any of the amendments written by...
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Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke this week said the agency has made no changes in its plan to stop buying agency MBS by the end of this week and then let its massive portfolio drain off until market and economic conditions permit a more active disposition program.With just one week left in the 15-month Fed buying program, the agency has amassed a portfolio... [Includes one chart]
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Ginnie Mae President Ted Tozer, now four weeks into his command of the government MBS guarantor, has begun evaluating Ginnie’s current programs and relationships with investors and issuers and is looking to further solidify the agency’s strong foundation in the market.In an interview with Inside MBS & ABS this week, Tozer noted that his extensive experience as...
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A New York Court late last week dismissed a case brought by two bond insurers against mortgage lender GreenPoint Mortgage Funding for violating its mortgage underwriting guidelines, but the judge allowed the bond trustee to continue the suit. California-based GreenPoint filed a motion to dismiss the suit, which was brought by CFIG Assurance North America and Syncora...
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Loans serviced for non-agency MBS trusts and other private investors accounted for 23.7 percent of total loan modification activity tracked by federal regulators during the fourth quarter of 2009. That was the second-largest category of loan mod activity, trailing mortgages held in bank portfolios, although each sector accounted for only about 8.0 percent of total servicing by companies...
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A record 64.6 percent of U.S. home mortgages were pledged as collateral to MBS as of the end of 2009, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. A total of $6.971 trillion of residential MBS were outstanding at the end of last year. That was actually down slightly from the record volume reached at the end of September, but the overall supply of home... [Includes one chart]
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