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’Pru/AIA – It’s alive
Shares in Prudential are strangely becalmed following Friday’s news of talks to renegotiate the $35.5bn price tag for the Asian business of AIG:
The markets seems to have no idea whether the deal will go ahead,
The slow death of Hamp, the summer of delinquencies
The misfortunes of the US Treasury’s Hamp programme continue to make headlines.
On Monday, the department released its latest data for the Home Affordable Modification Plan. The April report showed that about 123,000 trial Hamp mortgage modifications were cancelled last month,
Some good sovereign debt news
What’s this? Could this be some good news on the sovereign debt front, for once? It surely can.
On Wednesday the US Treasury quietly announced it would be cutting back the size of its bond auctions,
Come one, come all, to the Great Citi Sale
CNBC was already calling it one of the greatest stock sales in history when it scooped Morgan Stanley was the deal’s underwriter. And it will all come courtesy of Uncle Sam.
The Treasury finally, formally,
Foreclosure or forgiveness?
Absent a thorough review of HAMP and its goals, the program risks helping few, and for the rest, merely spreading out the foreclosure crisis over the course of several years…
- Neil Barofsky, Sigtarp,
More on that Hamp-lified moral hazard
The below is a very timely — and thought-provoking — data set, given that things are once again heating up in the realm of US mortgage modification post-Bank of America’s principal reduction plan.
Behold,
Cuckoo clocks and chopsticks at dawn
The Swiss franc reached a record against the euro on Tuesday — and that’s despite a recent pledge by the country’s central bank that it would help counter “excessive appreciation” in the currency.
Hamp-lified, moral hazard outrage du jour
Earlier this week, a US Treasury presentation containing suggested alterations to the department’s Home Affordable Modification Program (Hamp) leaked to the media.
One of the central suggestions of the presentation was that lenders would no longer be able to start foreclosing on a delinquent borrower until they’d been screened and judged ineligible for the Hamp.
Operation drano
The market, it seems, was still digesting the potential repercussions of “operation drano”on Tuesday.
What we know is that, starting tomorrow at 11.30am in Washington, the US treasury will conduct weekly auctions of $25bn in 56-day bills as part of the so-called Supplementary Financing Program.
Hamp on steroids
Barry Ritholtz has got his hands on something interesting — Hamp on steroids.
Readers of FT Alphaville may remember that the US Treasury’s Home Affordable Modification Program, which aims to keep borrowers in their houses by reducing interest payments,
Vogue finance
Whom would you rather see in the pages of Vogue?
The upcoming April issue of the American style bible features one of those financial faces — that of US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. In an interview,
The second lien sticking-point
Just a datapoint for you, as the debate over the US Treasury’s Hamp programme rages on.
As a reminder, the Home Affordable Modification Plan aims to help keep people in their houses primarily by lowering interest rate payments.
Hamp-ing up the numbers
On Friday the US Treasury released December figures for its Home Affordable Modification Program.
The report makes for interesting reading maths.
For a start, as Calculated Risk notes, you have to wonder why,
A second (lien) helping of Hamp
So the second lien portion of the US Treasury’s mortgage modification scheme is reportedly “on hold.”
This shouldn’t be a major surprise since the programme, called 2MP, an add-on to the Home Affordable Mortgage Modifaction Plan (Hamp),
Hamp, what is it good for?
In addition to the difficulty of converting temporary mortgage modifications into permanent ones, one of the big question marks hanging over the US Treasury’s Home Affordable Modification Plan is the redefault rate.
Very Hamp-ered
They are here!
Official figures for the number of permanent modifications undertaken as part of the US Treasury’s Home Affordable Modification Plan (Hamp) were published on Thursday.
As a reminder,
Hamp-ing it up
Swat teams, shaming and sanctions are just a few of the incentives now in place to force financial companies to make more mortgage modifications.
But why are such drastic measures needed?
First a quick recap:
The Geithner plan for banks
The key points from Friday’s FT comment piece.
First, capital requirements for banks simply must be higher across the board. Bringing more capital into the banking system is vital. It is equally crucial to hold the largest,
The FDIC is not bust, ok?
The FDIC published its quarterly banking profile on Thursday, and it appears that while things are certainly pretty dismal (its fund is down to $10.4bn from $13.bn over in the quarter) the agency is not exactly about to go bust anytime soon.
US government to end the era of the unregulated hedge fund
Legislation is being sent to the Hill today, according to a speech to be given shortly by Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr:
I would like to speak to you about where we stand today in the economy at large and the forces and incentives that led us into the current crisis.
Creatine finance
What brawn-building potion are the world’s central bankers on? Is it legal? We suspect a urine-test may be in order – certainly in the Alps.
Witness this declaration on Thursday by Philipp Hildebrand,
HM Treasury refuses FOI stress test data
No surprise, really, in news that Bloomberg has had a Freedom of Information request to find out the results of the banking stress tests in the UK turned down.
This is Britain, after all.
Disclosure of the results “at this time may lead to uncertainty in financial markets,
So who is this person familiar with the matter?
As FT Alphaville has already noted here, there appears to be one very busy “person familiar with the matter” doing a not insubstantial amount of leaking to the media with regard to the stress-test results.
Foreign US holdings breakdown
The US Treasury provides exhaustive details of foreign holders of US securities in the period June 2007-June 2008. The data, which runs to 183 pages, might be dated but it’s intriguing all the same.
As Brad Setser over at CFR points out,
And the results of the US bank stress test are…
We have had the methodology (sort of), now we are starting to get some early leaks results from the US bank stress tests.
And on the face of it they do not look so good for either Bank of America or Citigroup.
Trillion fatigue
Do you find yourself feeling bloated or sluggish at the very thought of digesting yet another dollar bailout figure?
Does the mention of a few trillion dollars not even cause you to raise your eyebrows anymore?
You may not know it,
Structured credit cool on the Geithner Plan
As we know, equity markets greeted the Geithner toxic asset plans with joy – the Dow registered its fifth-biggest point gain in history.
The reaction in the structured credit markets on Monday was less enthusiastic as this this graphic from Bernstein Research highlights
The structured credit markets did show some positive reaction,
Geithner – My Plan for Bad Bank Assets
From Monday’s Wall Street Journal:
Today, we are announcing another critical piece of our plan to increase the flow of credit and expand liquidity. Our new Public-Private Investment Program will set up funds to provide a market for the legacy loans and securities that currently burden the financial system.