6/6/2012 - Notes on the Current State of the Secondary Mortgage Market

5/16/2012 - Concerns Grow Over Freddie/Fannie Price Dislocations

5/2/2012 - Prospects For Liquidity in Conventional 3.0 MBS And Mortgage Rate Implications

4/26/2012 - Loan Pricing, Pipeline Hedging, and MBS Coupon Swaps

4/18/2012 - Trading in MBS Pools Backed By HARP Loans

"Ray--the interesting point is that, because 30-year 3s are so low in coupon, that the historical process won't repeat itself (in my view). As I mentioned, banks can't/won't buy them, and there's not enough juice to create interesting structures ("juice" meaning coupon). Re historical data--You can look over time and see how issuance ramps up--as I mentioned, it's increased fairly rapidly in 3.5s. A separate issue is what metric to look at to judge "liquidity"..."    View Comment

"Well, I'm glad I stirred things up a bit. A few comments: *Mr. Kurpinsky--I have Inside Job in my briefcase, and I've heard it's good. I read Chain of Blame and The Big Short--both were very good. *Don--it seems that there's a difference between the percentage of loans that were fraudulent and the percentage of mortgage brokers involved in fraud. Mr. Ceizyk: I don't disagree with everything you say. My point is that the consumers who took the loans should not be absolved of responsibility..."    View Comment

"You raise a relevant point. However, I don't view it as large entities claiming they don't have to follow the laws. What I see happening is that procedures that have been followed for decades are suddenly being brought into question by the army of lawyers looking to stall foreclosures, as well as media members looking for a compelling story. From a legal perspective, in any case, the notes are conveyed to the trust once the contract is signed, not when the notes themselves are delivered...."    View Comment

"A few thoughts on this: 1) Keep in mind that a set of accounting changes are coming that will force the GSEs to consolidate boatloads of assets onto their balance sheets. (Figure that one boatload ~$1trillion, and according to reports they have more than 2 1/2 boatloads to consolidate.) It's unclear what the earnings ramifications are, but the impact will be huge. 2) If the GSEs have to take a big accounting loss in Q1, the amount that the Treasury committed ($200 billion each for FN and FR)..."    View Comment

"My suspicion is that the pop in housing starts represents an aberration (or the proverbial dead-cat bounce). Since the reported numbers are annualized, a few additional properties could skew the numbers a lot higher, particularly off the rock-bottom absolute level of starts. I have a question for the members of this site: why are the MBA's refi indices continuing to show strength in apps for gov't products? Given the extra costs associated with FHA loans, this is perplexing...any thoughts..."    View Comment