Secondary

Roughly 33 full-timers will lose their jobs when Ally Financial closes its MBS broker/dealer operation, according to a company spokeswoman.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has conceded that the higher incentive payments the Treasury Department is willing to pay make principal reduction cost effective for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Over the last 10 years, $23.7-billion State Employees' Credit Union in Raleigh, N.C. has not had a single mortgage handed back to it by an investor due to poor underwriting.

Even though third-party due diligence has always been performed on whole loans, the providers of these services have more skin-in-the-game now that rating agencies have very stringent requirements.

Non-agency MBS investors should look for bonds with smaller loan sizes in a structure that is levered to severity, said Amherst Securities Group analysts in a recent report.

If the new RMBS deals issued in the past week give an indication of what the non-agency market space will look like, then it is clear that only the best will do.

The potential sale of the Maiden Lane III (ML III) assets might signal that the Federal Reserve is making its move to take liquidity out of the system, securitization experts said Thursday.

There have not been very many weeks yet this year where the markets have not been roiled about something, and the last week was not one of them either.

Wells Fargo, the successor to Wachovia Capital Markets, told a federal court in Wichita, Kan. Friday it should dismiss NCUA's suit over mortgage-backed securities Wachovia sold to offering prospectuses.

Thirty Democratic senators are urging the Federal Housing Finance Agency to evaluate the use of principal reduction as a "targeted solution" for assisting underwater borrowers with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans.