We are in need of a good phrase to describe whats going on in the financial community right now. We had Irrational Exuberance after the NASDAQ meltdown.

I now vote for Unprecedented Disruptions.

Last week, the mortgage industry was jolted by the American Home Mortgage shutdown. AHM, who was not a subprime lender, but specialized in interest-only subprime products was risk-priced out of business as investor refused to buy their paper. This week, we have Countrywide, the largest mortgage lender, who had already made an announcement about the weak housing market a few weeks ago when the mortgage meltdown jumped to the front page and shook the stock market, made another one yesterday evening:

>Shares of Countrywide Financial Corp. plunged in premarket trading Friday after the nation’s biggest mortgage lender issued a bleak assessment of the home lending industry.

>The Calabasas, Calif.-based lender in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday cited “unprecedented disruption” in the trading markets where mortgage lenders raise money.

* Investors who buy their bonds from packaged loan pools packages aren’t buying.
* Rather than dump them for low prices, Countrywide is keeping them in portfolio.
* Consumer credit quality of prime borrowers is deterioating rapidly.
* They are unclear how this will impact the viability of their company, even though they have a large cash reserve.

In other words, they can’t issue as many mortgages because investor demand has dropped considerably. This will drive up mortgage rates, at least in the short run.

I find it interesting that the announcement was made late on Thursday with Friday being a weak news day.

Here’s the SEC filing that was made in tandem with the announcement. Do a text search on the word “constrained.”

UPDATE:
Today’s Federal Reserve Statement
The Fed is trying to calm a jittery credit market [WSJ].

> The Federal Reserve, in a statement that underscores the deepening severity of developments in credit markets, said it is “providing liquidity to facilitate the orderly functioning of financial markets,” and will pump enough money into credit markets to keep the Fed’s target for the federal funds interest rate at 5.25%. U.S. federal-funds futures early Friday priced in about a 100% chance that the Federal Reserve will reduce its key lending rate by a half-percentage point to 4.75% by the next policy meeting on Sept. 18.


6 Comments

  1. Noah August 10, 2007 at 10:53 am

    I vote for:

    “Unscrupulous Lending of an Inconceivable Manner”

    Coin it!

  2. ec August 10, 2007 at 3:59 pm

    There’s a great quote from someone at PIMCO on one of my favorite blogs ( http://www.rgemonitor.com/blog/roubini ) on this – he called the market a “constipated owl” because nothing is moving!

  3. ec August 10, 2007 at 4:00 pm

    Just to be clear, he was talking about CDOs and other real estate securities where no one’s buyin’ – obviously there is plenty of movement in the main market, unfortunately mostly south!

  4. Eric August 12, 2007 at 2:25 pm

    I saw Mort Zuckerman make a prediction that the Fed will cut rates two times in the next four months. Won’t that pretty much put enough liquidity in the markets to avoid a really -crunch-?

  5. molly August 13, 2007 at 9:29 am

    Check out http://www.eyeoncountrywide.info, an independent consumer resource examining sub-prime lending and Countrywide Financial Corporation

  6. Aggie August 16, 2007 at 10:47 pm

    Investors aren’t buying their loans because countrywide is over-valuating properties that it lends on. They have a portfolio full of loans that don’t have the equity position they think they have. That leads to foreclosure and leads countrywide further down this slippery slope. Watch for the companies who are conservative with their appraisals to come out of this mess without much damage.

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