Video: Chris Whalen – more on MBS FraudGate, Pension Fund suits, Securities Law and the markets need to restructure these TBTF banks
The risks are high, and Mr Market is asleep, methinks that Uncle Sam has given the TBTF the all clear, leaving taxpayers holding the bag, again.
Courtesy of Market-Ticker:
“This is cancer – this isn’t a sudden crisis that is going to erupt out of the ground.”
“We’re going to wait until well-into this, and then we’re going to do the right thing – which is restructuring.”
“MBS…. are calling their lawyers. Trustees may or may not have the note.“
“There are a lot of investors out there who don’t know what they own… they may own unsecured loans….. trustees that were supposed to do things under state law (and didn’t)… even Fannie and Freddie have issues with this.”
“…. this is not minutia; this is the letter of the law.“
“The dealer has to deliver to the trustee the notes (under NY State Law)”
Housing – Will NAR fudge the data on July existing home sales? Sales fell *OFF A CLIFF*
Do the folks over at NAR have the bxlls to print the data on existing home sales tomorrow? Indications from the real world are a drop of a minimum of 20%. I am gonna say NAR gives us the unvarnished, SCARYUGLY truth to build pressure for QE2 or REQE(whatevernumberwereon), so a SAAR of 3.77 million says I.
Tom Lawlor gives us the latest ‘Consensus’, which is starting to sound like some disease,
…amazingly the “consensus” forecast for existing home sales in July calls for a SAAR of 4.65-4.66 million, which would be down just 9.3-9.5% from last July’s seasonally adjusted pace….
Read Tom Lawlor’s guest piece on CalculatedRisk outlining his take on the number.
Will NAR lowball it even further, a kitchen sink, report? Will they try to ‘smoothe’ the data over the next few months hoping we hit a ledge or a meteor hits us?
…One forecaster (no names!), after hearing about the local sales data, suggested that the NAR “just won’t” publish a sales number that low, and will probably “smooth” the number over the next several months!!!…
Or will they do what needs to be done and report the damned data as it really is so people can come to grips. If they plan to do QE2 and the USD is going back down, let’s flag the play so we in the stands can load up the popcorn and precious!
Tune in tomorrow morning 10:00am EST to find out!
Will the market wig out on the data? Stick its fingers in its ears and say La La La all the way to 11k? Who the hell knows, it has become an irrational thing being run out of TPTB and TBTF monsters as far as I can tell.
CalculatedRisk-10:00 AM: Existing Home Sales for July from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The consensus is for a decrease to 4.65 million (SAAR) in July from 5.37 million in June. Take the under! Housing economist Tom Lawler is projecting 3.95 million SAAR. In addition to sales, the level of inventory and months-of-supply will be very important (since months-of-supply impacts prices).CR:
Housing Update: 1 in 7 home loans now in default or foreclosure (14.69%), 4.3 million units in shadow inventory and purchase applications plunged 27%, lowest level in 13 yrs, but don’t worry! Tim Geithner says Euro Debt crisis could never happen here…
And the hits just keep on comin’ in housing…
Calculated Risk is covering all the bases:
Details from the MBA conference call on the Q1 delinquency RECORD, highlights include:
FHA foreclosure starts up sharply. “Shadow inventory” of 4.3 million loans that need to worked through (90 day delinquent or in foreclosure) – or they will become REOs or distressed sales. Prime fixed rate is now the key problem! “Sand states” will not be as dominant as the problem moves to prime fixed rate.
On the horror show that is the purchase application drop (just like Cash for Clunkers, they cannibalized future sales):
The MBA reports: Mortgage Purchase Applications Plummet While Refinance Applications Increase in Latest MBA Weekly Survey
…The Refinance Index increased 14.5 percent from the previous week and the seasonally adjusted Purchase Index decreased 27.1 percent from one week earlier. This is the lowest Purchase Index observed in the survey since May of 1997. …
Rick Santelli lets Kanjorski D-PA have it on Fannie, Freddie reform…
love the Rickster!
Our many posts on FAN and FRED here
Fannie’s turn: loses *another* $13b in Q1 asks for *another* $8.5b from Treasury, has now lost $136.8B and taken $75b in aid…
Update: here is that quote, it is courtesy of Calculated Risk:
…Greg Morcroft at MarketWatch reports:
Fannie sees no profits for the “indefinite future” … financial sustainability uncertain….
They aren’t even TRYING to make it look good anymore…one highlight in the WSJ said they do not see any chance of being profitable in the near term, pfft, Should’ve done the damn HOLC.
…the mortgage-finance company operating under federal conservatorship, said it will seek $8.4 billion in aid from the U.S. Treasury Department after reporting its 11th-straight quarterly loss.
The company said it had an $11.5 billion first-quarter loss in a filing today with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Washington-based Fannie Mae had posted $136.8 billion in losses over the previous 10 quarters and taken more than $75 billion in U.S. aid since April 2009….
HOUSING UPDATE – Financial Services Cmte asking for your experiences with JPMorgan Chase ahead of hearing tomorrow…
Update: There is another hearing tomorrow, see today’s hearing here:
April 13th from prepared testimony reads more like a PR show by the banks.
April 14th will be the regulators the National Law Center and those pro HAMP vs The Bankers Assoc and othersBoth will be broadcast live
More info:
Barriers to Principal Reduction
April 13: House Financial Services CommitteeThe Recently Announced Revisions to HAMP
April 14: House Financial Services Committee
RE: Congressional Hearing in Washington DC, Tuesday 4/13/10, 10am with the Financial Committee.
MiM has been covering the many moods of the HAMP program since its inception.
Okay peeps, if you have a HAMP experience you would like to relate to the House Fin Svcs Cmte ahead of the hearing tomorrow on HAMP and servicers please contact as follows with your experience:
From loansafe.org Chase HAMP thread:
Just had a phone call from Brendan Woodbury – who is also handling tomorrow’s House Financial Services Committee hearing
He said for me to asap FAX over all I have – I asked him if it would be ok to have others do the same – he said by all means.
brendan.woodbury@mail.house.gov
FAX ASAP what you have gone through to
Congressman Barney Frank
MARK URGENT – PERTAINS TO FINANCIAL MEETING 4/13/10
FAX to (202) 225-0182
The head of mortgage lending for JP Morgan Chase David Lowman entered testimony suggesting a Quick turn around and assistance for any homeowner trying to stay in their home.
More info here including David Lowman’s prepared testimony (click on the link to his name).
House Financial Services Committee
Any HAMP applicant, after either introducing you to their friend..RALPH!, or laughing deliriously in response, will happily hand over evidence of, in most cases, 15+ months of fruitless attempts to work with the servicers on HAMP.
HAMP is all voluntary. HAMP to date, is extend and pretend to keep homes off the market until the deluded banks think prices will come back. Forecasts suggest 15 YEARS before prices are back in sand states.
Today the big servicers are opposing the principal writedown approach Treasury is finally coming around to.
In written testimony prepared for a hearing in Washington Tuesday of the House Financial Services Committee, some of the nation’s top mortgage lenders warned of the risks of relying heavily on forgiving principal as a means of averting foreclosures and argued for concentrating mainly on other methods, such as reducing interest rates….
These banks forget TARP, its entire purpose as written was to buy bad home loans and relieve the foreclosure crisis that led to the financial collapse. Instead they got a free ride, FED continues to give them free money, they have rates so low savers are punished, they continue to devalue our dollar so we have less purchasing power, and they won’t fix the damn housing issue which is back with a vengeance.
If they will not work out the loans to resolve the issue, then the House needs to go ahead and do the cram down bill instead, which we have been opposed to until now. The banks need to share the economic pain they brought upon us all.
If we had LET THEM FAIL, they would’ve done write downs themselves to keep afloat. Our interference with TARP let them avoid the principal writedowns to begin with.
One more time – FAN FRED FHA back all these loans anyway, the TAXPAYERS are ALREADY on the hook. Not working through mods quickly with writedowns means walkaways continue apace. They are accelerating and the recent FAN home attitudes survey showed fully 15% of those surveyed agreed it was ok to walk away if facing financial difficulty making payments.
…When asked if financial distress makes stopping payments on an underwater mortgage acceptable, 15 percent of respondents said yes in Fannie Mae’s National Housing Survey, a remarkable level of public acceptance for homeowners who walk away from their mortgages in light of the growing number of defaults in Fannie Mae’s portfolio.
Both delinquent mortgage borrowers and those current on their mortgage payments are more than twice as likely to have seriously considered stopping their payments if they know someone who has already defaulted, according to the survey released today.
Underwater borrowers were more than twice as likely to be behind on their mortgage payments and were more than twice as likely to believe stopping payments was acceptable than borrowers who were not underwater. Only 33 percent of respondents cited their moral qualms as a factor motivating them to pay their mortgage…
Even conservatives are FINALLY accepting HOLC (HomeOwnersLoanCorporation like in Depression)- CATO INSTITUTE!
…The omission of recourse has been a major flaw of the Obama loan modification plans. If the taxpayer is putting something on the table, then borrowers should be expected to do the same. During the Great Depression, FDR recognized as much.
The primary New Deal vehicle for addressing foreclosures was the Home Owners Loan Corporation. The HOLC required recourse and practiced it. In fact, approximately a third of HOLC revenues were from deficiency judgments against delinquent borrowers, including wage garnishment. Perhaps there are some parallels to today, as the HOLC found the second most common reason for foreclosure to be “obstinate refusal to pay.”
FDR recognized that many delinquent borrowers could afford neither their mortgage nor a deficiency judgment; we must recognize the same today. Recourse is not a cure to stop every foreclosure. It is, however, a proven method for reducing some foreclosures…
and now admit it would have been better in 08. Gee who said that? Hillary that’s wh0.
…First, we must address the skyrocketing rates of mortgage defaults and foreclosures that have buffeted the economy and ignited the credit crisis. Two million homeowners carry mortgages worth more than their homes. They hold $3 trillion in mortgage debt. Nearly three million adjustable-rate mortgages are scheduled for a rate increase in the next two years. Another wave of foreclosures looms.I’ve proposed a new Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), to launch a national effort to help homeowners refinance their mortgages. The original HOLC, launched in 1933, bought mortgages from failed banks and modified the terms so families could make affordable payments while keeping their homes. The original HOLC returned a profit to the Treasury and saved one million homes. We can save roughly three times that many today. We should also put in place a temporary moratorium on foreclosures and freeze rate hikes in adjustable-rate mortgages. We’ve got to stem the tide of failing mortgages and give the markets time to recover.
Market Mover Tuesday: Housing data
Update: Sales of existing homes fall 0.6%, third month of declines. This data is PRIOR to the snowstorms, so dont believe anyone who spins it as weather related. That housing credit did just what clunkers did, it borrowed against future sales….
Key housing data points on sales coming in today (Feb home sales 10:00 am) and the critters on the Hill have decided to turn their ‘laser like focus’ to housing (Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac). And it only took them 5 years. Quick on the uptake these critters eh? Meanwhile it looks as though FAN and FRED have RADICALLY cut back on loan volume..which would be good if we were getting them out of the business, but we aren’t so what’s happening?
The government seized control of Fannie Mae // and Freddie Mac // massive companies that purchase home loans, package them into investments and guarantee them against default. The price tag has been huge—$126 billion and growing.Now comes the hard part: figuring out what to do next.
“They have a separate regulator and they are a structural problem that is very large and very difficult to deal with separately,” Paul Kanjorski, Chairman of the Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance and Government Sponsored Enterprises, told CNBC.
Well what does Team Obama plan for housing? (beyond the ‘extend and pretend’ BS where they string homeowners along on HAMP) Well they are voting PRESENT …AGAIN…real shockah there eh?
With the Obama administration largely mute on the issue, Congress will hold its first hearing Tuesday about how to restructure the mortgage system in the wake of the financial crisis.
…Since the government took over Fannie and Freddie, Obama officials have given few details on their long-term thinking, apart from saying that they want to delay a legislative proposal until next year. In the meantime, officials plan to seek public comment on a list of questions to be published next month….
So in this case, like every other, Obama lets Congress, specifically the House and Pelosi, lead the way. I guess that was the ‘signed, sealed, delivered’ deal he and Pelosi made when she selected him as our candidate . As usual the two parties are diametrically opposed:
Kanjorski said he was favoring some smaller Fannies and Freddies, with some government connection, so if they fail they will not bring the system down with them….
Rep. Spencher Bachus, ranking Republican on the committee, said in a subsequent CNBC interview that he would prefer government exit the industry entirely. “We need to phase it out over time,” he said. “America is about competition and innovation. The federal model simply is not the efficient model.”
So when will this CORE ECONOMIC ISSUE, be addressed?
…Working out a new system is likely to take years. For the time being, the market is still resting on three government pillars: Fannie, Freddie and the Federal Housing Administration.There has been plenty of talk in recent months about how to scale back reliance on those behemoths, which own or guarantee half of all mortgages….
Barney Frank is pushing Treasury for at least some kind of outline of their FAN FRED HOUSING plan. Gee maybe some of the critters realize they will not have a majority much less Chair of the Cmte, much longer….
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac won’t be allowed to return to a precrisis structure that rewarded shareholders with big profits for years but ultimately saddled taxpayers with massive losses, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will tell a congressional panel Tuesday.
The administration will outline broad principles for the future of the mortgage market at the hearing, including stronger consumer protections and explicit guarantees for any government backstop of mortgages.
“The housing-finance system cannot continue to operate as it has in the past,” Mr. Geithner says in prepared testimony. The administration won’t issue a detailed overhaul proposal until later this year.
The hearing comes as Congress turns up the pressure on the administration to discuss how it plans to rebuild the mortgage market, the recipient of massive government support since the credit crunch began more than two years ago.
“We need people to start focusing on it. Nobody was coming up doing the hard thinking,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D., Mass.), who said he called the hearing to accelerate debate on the future of Fannie and Freddie…
…Fannie and Freddie, together with the Federal Housing Administration, now back more than 9 in 10 home loans….
ginaswo
