Bondholders claimed that Citi not only misrepresented its exposure to mortgage-backed assets, but also understated losses on loans.
Fishman remembers being pitched on creating a securities lending program that would have used the proceeds to buy mortgage-backed assets.
The complexities of thousands of different mortgage-backed assets will make this hard.
Merrill was an outlier in terms of the size of its exposure to mortgage-backed assets, because of its leading role as a distributor of CDOs.
Nor have investors grown any more confident about their ability to price the banks' toxic mortgage-backed assets: Merrill Lynch's cut-price sale of collateralised-debt obligations in July has had few imitators.
He says the program could be expanded over time to include commercial mortgage-backed securities, certain residential mortgage-backed securities and other assets.
The Fed adds Treasuries and Agency mortgage-backed securities to its assets and pays, in effect, by crediting the reserve accounts of the banking system.
These were often assets that were mortgage backed and were losing a substantial amount of value at an unprecedented rate.
By investing virtually all of their assets in mortgage-backed securities backed by the Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae) the Agency Mortgage REITs are able to completely deflect credit risk.
It purchased unprecedented quantities of mortgage-backed securities and other low-quality assets that threatened the solvency of many financial institutions.
Like a lot of banks, Colonial Bank holds some mortgage-backed securities the kind of assets that investors are fleeing.
Most disappointment was directed at the sketchy plan to tackle banks' toxic assets, such as mortgage-backed securities and leveraged loans.
Indeed, the Fed has spent those years buying up residential-mortgage backed securities in their attempt to take toxic assets out of the market and push down mortgage rates.
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Perhaps the most striking characteristics of today's agreement - which amends a draft first published in 2010 - is that banks will be allowed to include corporate bonds, some shares and high-quality residential mortgage backed securities in their permitted stocks of liquid assets.
In QE1, the Fed purchased non-traditional assets for its portfolio, including mortgage backed securities (MBS) and derivatives.
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Insurance companies invest in bond markets, stock markets as well as alternative assets like real estate and mortgage-backed securities.
The facility may be expanded over time and eligible asset classes may be expanded later to include other assets, such as commercial mortgage-backed securities, non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities or other asset classes.
Mr. Gross's portfolio has been heavily concentrated on high-quality U.S. assets this year, led by mortgage-backed securities and Treasury bonds.
The Company intends to use the proceeds from the offering and concurrent private placement to acquire its target assets, which consist of residential mortgage-backed securities issued or guaranteed by U.S. Government-sponsored entities , residential mortgage-backed securities that are not issued or guaranteed by U.S. Government-sponsored entities and other mortgage-related investments.
What is important is what happens to money and credit flows as the Fed allows special lending programs to expire and begins to replace other purchased assets on its balance sheet, mainly mortgage-backed securities, with traditional Treasury bills.
Some of the soured assets Beal purchased at fire-sale prices were residential mortgage-backed securities that were sold in deals in which banks made representations and warranties about loan quality and promised to repurchase those loans if the representations were no good.
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It also widened the category of assets banks could advance as collateral to include top-rated mortgage-backed securities.
The company caters to fund managers and institutional investors trading in illiquid assets like private company stock, bankruptcy claims, loans, mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations.
In fact, for all the current excitement about rock-star bonds and the like, it is striking that the vast majority of asset-backed securities are American and involve a few types of assets, such as mortgage and credit-card loans, which generate relatively predictable amounts of cash at predictable times.
And he did it by brilliantly executing thousands of complicated trades in the very assets that were tarred as toxic in the 2008 financial crisis: subprime mortgage-backed securities.
The Fed is also concerned with other high-yielding debt, like mortgage backed REITs, as they fear individual and institutional investors will take on too many high-risk assets.
To come around to the position that mortgage backed-securities should be avoided, a banker would have to conclude that the losses to these assets would exceed the cost of capital penalties.
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The feds may be zeroing in on similar lapses in methodology in rating complex mortgage-backed securities, which got their triple-A ratings not because of the quality of the underlying assets in the case of subprime mortgages, that quality stank but because of their structure that guaranteed payment to higher tranches of securities at the expense of the lower.
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