Report: MBS Losses May Total $400B

Losses on mortgage securities in the current financial crisis may total roughly $400 billion, resulting in "much larger" decreases in lending and balance sheet shrinkage topping $1 trillion, according to a recent report by Wall Street and business school experts. The report indicates that the losses, combined with the effects of leverage of mark-to-market accounting, could lead to "just under a $2 trillion contraction in intermediary balance sheets" and reduce growth in gross domestic product over four quarters by "roughly 1 to 1.5 percentage points." Authors of the report have affiliations with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, the University of Chicago, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, and Princeton University.