June 2009 - Around The Web

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency says . Delinquency rates on the least-risky mortgages more than doubled in the first quarter from a year earlier as U.S. efforts to help homeowners failed to keep pace with job losses that pushed more borrowers...

Earlier I posted some graphs on the surge in prime delinquecies from the See: Here is some info on types of modifications: While 185,156 mortgages were modified in the first quarter of 2009, 122,398 were “combination modifications” that changed more than...

Lenders modified more troubled loans during the first quarter, according to a government report released today, but a growing number of borrowers are falling behind on their payments.

Delinquencies and foreclosures on first-lien mortgages continued to increase during the first quarter of this year, but loan modifications also increased and the trend continued toward more sustainable modifications with lower monthly payments, according to a report issued today by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS).

The Federal Reserve ’s June policy meeting is now a week in the past, and Fed officials are starting to emerge to explain the central bank’s decision-making in more detail. James Bullard , president of the St. Louis Fed, was up today with a talk to Philadelphia...

submits: at Rortybomb wades into the CRA debate with a very good point: toxic subprime loans bear almost no relation to CRA loans. 80% of the subprime mortgages expired in 30 months; they perpetually had to be refinanced. 75%+ of subprime mortages had...

Posted By: A lot of folks are parsing the latest S&P Case Shiller home price report out today, and debating whether some month-to-month increases are proof of home price stabilization nationwide. I frankly think it’s impossible to say anything nationwide...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - World Bank President Robert Zoellick said on Tuesday that financial markets are showing signs of stabilization, but warned that the global crisis was far from over in developing countries.

There comes a time when, however alluring is the limelight, and however strong your thrust for action, you’d better opt for a graceful exit. The exit of former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan has been anything but graceful, made all the more frustrating by...

The Obama administration sent Congress a detailed proposal on Tuesday to create a consumer protection agency responsible for financial products, a move that marks the first shot in a heated battle with banks and other financial institutions over how to...

There is a fascinating about how the world of derivatives has shaped up through the crisis. I often encounter misconceptions about hedging. The one line that summarises the issue is this: The job of a hedging strategy is to combat extraneous economic...

Few topics are quite as polarizing as the “savings glut.” The very term is considered to shift responsibility for the current crisis away . That is unfortunate. It is quite possible to believe that the buildup of vulnerabilities that led to the current...

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Commercial Real Estate/Multifamily Finance Quarterly Data Book for the first quarter of 2009. The analysis focuses on how the continued economic downturn in the United States placed further pressure on the commercial and multifamily real estate markets during the first quarter. While the pace of the economic slowdown appears to be easing, different aspects of commercial real estate and commercial real estate finance are feeling different levels...

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has an interesting report on the Long as reported by the Congressional Budget Office. Let's take a look. Last week, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its Long-Term Budget Outlook. The reports...

Bloomberg is reporting . The benchmark index for U.S. stock options fell below its closing level from the day before Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s September collapse as stocks rallied and investors paid less to hedge against equity losses. The VIX,...

Major stock indexes were little changed in early trading on the final day of the second quarter.

Summary of Fannie Mae's book of business for May 2009

Data through April 2009, released today by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller1 Home Price Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices, show that, although still negative, the annual decline of the 10-City and 20-City Composites improved.

submits: It seems the Bank of International Settlements ((BIS)) is not buying into the green shoots meme of recovery. More specifically, they call into question the health of banks that still carry large amounts of toxic assets on their balance sheets...

submits: This first chart is reality, no Kool-Aide here. click to enlarge This next chart is where we see Freddie Mac (FRE) getting out the ice cubes and sugar. I love the chart title “Delinquencies are low relative to the industry.” How about this for...