Category Archives: housing

After posting my entry about house-price futures yesterday, a loyal reader tipped me off to another entity dealing in such things here in the US: Radar Logic’s RPX. Again, I have no idea how liquid these things are, but the … Continue reading →

While most of us were filling our bellies on Thanksgiving, James Hamilton took a dive into the balance sheets of Fannie and Freddie. And he’s found some pretty scary figures: The total "book of business" held by Fannie and Freddie … Continue reading →

Yesterday I took aim at OFHEO, and I stand by what I wrote: the capital constraints on Fannie and Freddie are counterproductive and they’re damaging the entire mortgage market. But it is also true that the capital that OFHEO requires … Continue reading →

According to the WSJ, Freddie Mac has serious capital-adequacy problems, and they’re basically the fault of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight: The losses have left the company with core capital of $34.6 billion as of Sept. 30, only … Continue reading →

The entire market in subprime debt is just 1.4% of the size of global equity markets. Or, to put it another way, a 1.4% downward fluctuation in stocks erases the same amount of value as if all subprime-backed bonds were … Continue reading →

Peter Eavis, who started the Fannie Mae ball rolling on Wednesday, moves the story further today, with this rather startling and scary datapoint: Using fair value accounting, Fannie Mae’s capital — the company’s net worth — has declined sharply this … Continue reading →

Tanta’s on fire today. First came this, in re a court case in Ohio, where she suspected that Deutsche Bank had gotten sloppy with some paperwork: When Wall Street analysts stand up and demand that companies beef up back rooms, … Continue reading →

Jack Flack and Jack Shafer look to the MSM today for help in unscrambling the subprime mess. (Weirdly, however, Shafer asks journalists to nominate the best journalists on this beat, rather than asking genuine housing experts.) In the broader media … Continue reading →

The NYT today fronts a big state-of-the-meltdown story, keyed off Merrill Lynch’s losses yesterday. It doesn’t quite come out and say that we’re going to have a recession (David Wessel does that, in the WSJ), but it doesn’t shy from … Continue reading →

The WSJ asked UBS to prepare an analysis of bonds backed by Countrywide option ARMs, and has a big story about the results today. It’s not entirely clear what information was available to UBS that wasn’t available to the WSJ, … Continue reading →

Some subprime loans are selling for 3-6 cents on the dollar.
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The WSJ this morning fronts a story headlined "More Debtors Use Bankruptcy To Keep Homes"; the subhed is "Chapter 13 Filings Gain In Popularity Because They Halt Foreclosures". Empirically speaking, the thrust of the column seems a little bit dubious … Continue reading →

There’s an inventive and potentially good idea from the FDIC’s Sheila Bair in today’s NYT, which should be added to the Baker-Samwick proposal as another weapon in the arsenal being lined up to fight the worst effects of the housing … Continue reading →

Hank Paulson’s speech today about the housing market is spot-on, I think. Let me highlight a few passages, since most of you aren’t going to read all 4,300 words: Recent surveys have shown that as many as 50 percent of … Continue reading →

If you thought Citigroup was an unwieldy beast which is hard to turn around, you should have a look at the subprime mortgage industry. It’s now been well over a year since people started to get shocked by subprime default … Continue reading →