John Mauldin: The Subprime Debacle: Act 2, Part 2
At the end of last week's letter on the whole mortgage foreclosure mess, I wrote:
"All those subprime and Alt-A mortgages written in the middle of the last decade? They were packaged and sold in securities. They have had huge losses. But those securities had representations and warranties about what was in them. And guess what, the investment banks may have stretched credibility about those warranties. There is the real probability that the investment banks that sold them are going to have to buy them back. We are talking the potential for multiple hundreds of billions of dollars in losses that will have to be eaten by the large investment banks. We will get into details, but it could create the potential for some banks to have real problems."
Real problems indeed. Seems the Fed, PIMCO, and others are suing Countrywide over this very topic. We will go into detail later in this week's letter, covering the massive fraud involved in the sale of mortgage-backed securities. Frankly, this is scandalous. It is almost too much to contemplate, but I will make an effort.
- John Mauldin: The Good, The Bad, And The Greek (risks)
Greece was (and is) the first real test of the euro. Until the Greek crisis, there was no real need for any eurozone country to actually write a check for any other member. Ireland obligingly shouldered the responsibility for its own bad bank debts, paying...
- Banks Paying U.s. Homeowners Cash To Avoid Foreclosures
Banks, accelerating efforts to move troubled mortgages off their books, are offering as much as $35,000 or more in cash to delinquent homeowners to sell their properties for less than they owe. Lenders have routinely delayed or blocked such transactions,...
- Suing Wall Street Banks Never Looked So Shady - By Jonathan Weil
From February 25th. Next time you see some company complain its “mark-to-market” losses aren’t real, remember this name: the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle. It used to claim that, too. And it couldn’t have been more wrong. About a year ago,...
- Time: Pimco's Bill Gross Sees 2010 As Year Of Reckoning
But secondly, there's a ripple effect. Just speaking about Pimco's general portfolio strategy, we've sold our agency mortgage securities, Fannie and Freddie, in the billions to the willing check of the Fed. They're buying a trillion dollars...
- What To Make Of Qe3
I'm very annoyed that Bernanke announced QE3 today. The plan is to purchase $40 Billion of mortgage-backed securities each month until they are satisfied that the economy, specifically unemployment, is righted. He also announced today that interest...