S&P: Cap Markets Not Backing High-Cost Loans

Standard & Poor's Ratings Services says it has evaluated the impact of anti-predatory-lending statutes on the funding of high-cost loans through the capital markets and found that only 0.01% of the U.S. residential mortgage loans it rated last year were high-cost loans.Given that only $87 million of the approximately $758 billion rated in 2004 were high-cost loans, S&P said it is clear that the capital markets are not financing the origination of such loans. Since the anti-predatory-lending legislation that has become effective over the past couple of years generally targets high-cost loans, it would appear that such legislation has limited the origination of these loans. However, S&P said it is unable to determine whether such loans are being originated but not included in securitizations.