The Institutional Risk Analyst

Instead of seeking authority from Congress, Chairman Bernanke and other members of the FOMC merely turned on the public spigot.

We think that doing nothing is a fool’s trade, to be blunt, because the next Treasury refunding could pull market yields sharply higher.

The mood in the Dallas mortgage community is subdued, much like the atmosphere after an especially good party.

Baring some emergency, the Fed seems on track to keep interest rates at current levels indefintely.

As with the Volcker Rule for banks, the move to centralized clearing of Treasuries and T-1 settlement seems destined to reduce liquidity

If you conduct a fire sale analysis of BAC's balance sheet as of Q3 2023, the result more than wipes out the bank's tangible equity

Was the breakdown of the normally stable and, indeed, routine workings of the Clearinghouse the result of bad actors?

If we are marking balance sheet assets to actual market in the age of deflation, what of the heavily modeled world of servicing assets?

One of the effects of QE has been making many banks and real estate investors insolvent, a precursor to debt defaults.

Regulatory skepticism about mortgage assets could effect financing rates for lenders, which means higher mortgage rates for consumers.

We look for modest rate cuts in 2025, followed by an equally modest boom in mortgage lending

Large universal banks that ply the capital markets and use essentially infinite leverage in the derivatives markets face challenges

Rising interest rates are not good for bank earnings or bank equity valuations.

Bank earnings can be best described as cautiously mediocre, but as usual the Street proclaimed that three banks "beat the estimates"

The Powell Fed needs to drop short-term interest rates back down to 4% and leave them there indefinitely.

The legal dispute between Ginnie Mae and Texas Capital Bank makes additional defaults by HECM lenders more likely...

Did we mention margin calls on Treasury and mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and rising mark-to-market losses on securities...

UBS ultimately seems intent upon running off the remaining US mortgage assets, including a few billion in Ginnie Mae MSR financings

The public behavior and decision-making processes of SoftBank suggest that the organization is in trouble.

With a 75bp average total gfee, would the market for private label MBS return? Or would conventional lending volumes simply crater?