Articles About Mortgage-backed Securities

The Treasury Department just raked in a cool $25 billion for the American taxpayer. It sold the agency-backed mortgage-backed securities (MBS) that it bought during the financial crisis.  “The successful sale of these securities marks another important milestone in the wind-down of the government’s emergency financial crisis response efforts,” said Mary Miller, Treasury assistant secretary […]

Is a 20 percent downpayment on a house or condominium on the horizon?  If some federal regulators get their way, buyers may have to put down $60,000 on a $300,000 house to get the best possible mortgage interest rate.  Although this sets the bar high, regulators believe it will prevent the risky lending practices that […]

The Federal Reserve made some serious money in 2010. The central bank’s profit soared to $81.7 billion, a record high, primarily from growing interest earnings on federal agency and government-sponsored enterprise mortgage-backed securities.  The Fed’s balance sheet — which also can be monitored monthly — ballooned to $2.43 trillion, up $193 billion from 2009, as […]

The Obama administration and the Treasury Department have decided that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — the public-private housing finance model in place for the past four decades – will come to an end, although they pledged to continue backing the agencies’ existing obligations. “The GSE (government-sponsored enterprise) model is dead,” an Obama administration official […]

The Federal Reserve is going to subject the nation’s 19 largest banks to a new round of stress tests to determine if they are healthy enough to pay dividends to their shareholders again.   The Fed plans to use a conservative approach, applied with an even hand, on the nation’s largest and most complex banks.  The […]

Mortgage rates have hit a record low.  According to Freddie Mac, rates for 30-year mortgages fell to 4.27 percent from 4.32 percent in just one week.  At the same time, safe-haven government debt is more appealing to investors than ever, according to a Freddie Mac survey. The low rates may be a sign that housing […]

Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are in the process of trying to sell their fourth CMBS package in 2010 with $788 million of debt from 48 properties as investor interest in these vehicles rekindles.  Although the Federal Reserve noted that commercial real estate is still slowing economic growth, bond investors believe that growth is strong enough […]

In his semi-annual testimony before the House Financial Services Committee, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said that although the economy is exhibiting “tentative signs of stabilization,” he plans to maintain a “highly accommodative” monetary policy for the time being.  According to Bernanke, “The pace of decline appears to have slowed significantly.  In light of the […]

What recession? A recent conversation with a friend revealed the unexpected nugget that at least one segment of the credit industry is alive and extremely well. The friend’s mortgage broker daughter is taking a leave of absence from law school to concentrate her energies on processing all the refinance applications coming her way – a […]

The Federal Reserve is pulling out most – if not all — of the stops to thaw credit.  The central bank has cut its federal funds rate for overnight borrowing to just 0.25 percent, the lowest level ever.  But the move is likely too little, too late because the problem is not the lack of […]