by Calculated Risk on 11/09/2007 05:42:00 PM

From the Sacramento Bee: Dunmore Homes files for bankruptcy protection (hat tip JR)

Seeking protection from creditors, Granite Bay home builder Dunmore Homes filed for bankruptcy late Thursday as it tries to restructure its tangled finances.
...
The company, which claims to have built 22,000 homes since 1953 in California and Nevada, listed assets and liabilities of more than $100 million. It claimed between 5,000 and 10,000 creditors.

The largest is JPMorgan Chase Bank, which is owed $20 million, according to the filing. Many of the largest creditors are local construction firms.

This is just the beginning. As noted earlier, Neumann Homes filed for bankruptcy two weeks ago. Is there a home builder Implode-a-meter?

by Calculated Risk on 11/09/2007 03:17:00 PM

From MarketWatch: Bank of America: CDO dislocations may knock Q4 results

Bank of America Corp. said .. that dislocations in the market for ... (CDOs) will knock the bank's fourth-quarter results.

Here is the SEC 10-Q filing.

We expect these significant dislocations in the CDO market to continue, and it is unclear what impacts these dislocations will have on other markets in which we operate or maintain positions. ... We anticipate that these developments will adversely impact our results during the fourth quarter.

by Calculated Risk on 11/09/2007 02:45:00 PM

Here is the list of Alt-A residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and U.S. net interest margin securities (NIMS) affected by the S&P negative CreditWatch actions today:

U.S. Alt-A RMBS And Related NIMS Classes Affected By Nov. 9, 2007, CreditWatch Actions (hat tip bacon dreamz)

by Calculated Risk on 11/09/2007 12:51:00 PM

The Census Bureau reported today for September 2007:

"a goods and services deficit of $56.5 billion, compared
with $56.8 billion in August"

Click on graph for larger image.

The red line is the trade deficit excluding petroleum products. (Blue is the total deficit, and black is the petroleum deficit).

The ex-petroleum deficit is falling fairly rapidly, almost entirely because of weak imports (export growth is still strong). But unlike the previous decline in the trade deficit (during the '01 recession), petroleum imports are still strong.

UPDATE: Petroleum imports are strong in dollar terms, but they appear to be declining in BBLs, see exhibit 17. Imports are noisy month to month, but BBLs imported has declined year over year for the last several months. Also note the price per barrel. This will increase sharply over the next few months (but not to the spot level). Hat tip dryfly.

Normally oil prices would now be falling as the U.S. economy weakens - instead we are seeing margins shrinks for U.S. refiners and record high oil prices. This would imply that global demand for oil is strong, while domestic consumption is weak. This evidence supports the "decoupling" argument: that the U.S. economy could slow, but economic growth in the rest of the World would stay strong. I'm not convinced by the decoupling argument, and my view is that there is simply a lag between a slowing U.S. economy and a slowdown for the rest of the world.

Looking at the trade balance, excluding petroleum products, it appears the deficit peaked at about the same time as the housing market / mortgage equity withdrawal in the U.S. This is an interesting correlation (but not does imply causation).

"Interestingly, the change in U.S. home mortgage debt over the past half-century correlates significantly with our current account deficit. To be sure, correlation is not causation, and there have been many influences on both mortgage debt and the current account."
Alan Greenspan, Feb, 2005

The second graph shows the trade deficit and mortgage equity withdrawal as a percent of GDP.

Declining MEW is one of the reasons I forecast the trade deficit to decline in '07. And a declining trade deficit also has possible implications for U.S. interest rates; as the trade deficit declines, rates may rise in the U.S. because foreign CBs will have less to invest in the U.S..

Note also that import prices are surging. From Greg Ip at the WSJ:

Import prices jumped 1.8% in October from September and are up 9.6% from the previous year. To be sure, most of that was due to rising oil and natural-gas prices. But even excluding fuels, prices were 0.3% higher from September and up 2.4% from a year earlier.

The import prices problem will only get worse in October and November with surging oil prices and the falling dollar.

by Tanta on 11/09/2007 11:55:00 AM

Thanks to bacon dreamz.

Remember that, as CR says, Up is Down.

by Calculated Risk on 11/09/2007 10:16:00 AM

From Reuters: S&P says State St-managed CDO liquidating assets (hat tips nemo idoc)

The trustee of a $1.5 billion collateralised debt obligation (CDO) managed by State Street Global Advisors has started selling assets, apparently starting a process of liquidation, Standard & Poor's said late on Thursday.
...
The trustee of the Carina CDO has started selling the asset-backed securities -- residential-mortgage backed securities and CDOs -- making up the CDO at the direction of the structure's noteholders, S&P said.

"We believe the liquidation process has begun," S&P said in its statement.

It looks like a busy news day!

by Calculated Risk on 11/09/2007 10:06:00 AM

From MarketWatch: Wachovia sees higher loan losses

Bank says CDO portfolio lost more than $1 bln during October

Due to the October market deterioration, its asset-backed collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs, experienced further declines in value in the month of October 2007 by an amount it currently estimates to be approximately $1.1 billion pre-tax.

In the third quarter, market disruption-related losses totaling $1.3 billion pre-tax included $347 million of subprime-related valuation losses, net of hedges, on CDOs.

by Tanta on 11/09/2007 09:01:00 AM

See end of post for update.

The plot thickens on the WaMu/eAppraiseIT front. Yves at naked capitalism runs it down: James Lockhart, head of OFHEO, fires off irritated letter to Cuomo about the latter's public involvement of Fannie and Freddie in the mess without conferring first with OFHEO. The money quote (for which I have not seen anyone include the full context in the letter, alas): Lockhart says Cuomo "may not fully understand the difference between mortgages issued by government sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and those issued by other entities."

Yves runs down a preliminary list of what this might be about. I tend to assume that Lockhart is annoyed mightily because the way in which this was handled by Cuomo did, in fact, lead many people to think that Fannie and Freddie were targets of a criminal probe. That didn't help GSE share prices and it won't help calm the troubled bongwater of the credit markets. I also think it's plausible that Lockhart is responding to Cuomo's at least rhetorical linkage of the GSEs and the investment banks, and by extention prime conforming mortgage paper and subprime goofballery.

But I also suspect that Lockhart knows perfectly well that having a large seller/servicer go up in flames isn't any kind of good news for Fannie and Freddie, whether they're "innocent" or not. Seller/servicer concentration is a huge problem for the GSEs, in my view. One result of "800 pound gorilla" industry consolidations is that you have a handful of large operations not only servicing the majority of Fannie and Freddie's loans, you have that same handful making all those repurchase warranties that limit the GSEs' risk of covering guarantees on fraudulent stuff.

So it's one thing for a state AG to kick around somebody like American Home, whose agency servicing book is fairly small (and can be transferred, at least theoretically, to one of the gorillas if it fails). Kicking around a gorilla could put the GSEs in the position of feeling the effects of the concentration risk they have willingly allowed to build up over the years.

And, as I indicated yesterday, I do think part of what's being dragged out into the light of day is not just inflated appraisals but the whole "post purchase due diligence" model that the GSEs depend on (and that they "risk manage" by, exactly, doing a lot of business with big fat depositories who are, presumably, good for those warranties in the way some relatively small-change REIT isn't). Given this structural way of doing the business, there's nowhere an investigation of appraisal risk-offloading (as opposed to mere individual appraisal fraud) can go except to the parties who write the industry-standard rules on appraisal practices and whose upfront due diligence, or back-end due diligence, is or is not structured in a way that can catch bad appraisals before they, and other loose lending practices, wreak havoc in the housing and credit markets.

So I'm not sure what would be "worse" for the GSEs: that Cuomo does not understand how they operate, or that he does. Yesterday we were meditating on the problems created by relying on shallow-pocket counterparties to cover your liability. Today we are meditating on the risks of relying on deep-pocket counterparties to cover your liability. The latter is the classic "moral hazard" problem and it's worth asking whether Fannie and Freddie aren't hip-deep into it.

UPDATE:

Thanks to bacon dreamz, I have the link to Lockhart's letter to Cuomo (see post below [ed note: it's "above" for those of you who aren't standing on your heads]), which was hiding in plain sight on the internet (um, it's early . . .)

I have always had a lot of respect for Lockhart. This paragraph is making me stare in wonder at my monitor. Is it possible for anyone to be that naive about the mortgage business and still be alive? Here's the whole paragraph in question:

After reviewing these materials, I feel that you and your staff may not fully understand the differences between the mortgage-backed securities (MBS) issued by the GSEs and those issued by other entities. In particular, unlike the issuers of private label MBS, when Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac issues an MBS, they retain the credit risk on the underlying mortgages by guaranteeing repayment to MBS holders. Consequently, they have no economic incentive to knowingly purchase or guarantee mortgages with inflated appraisals. The two firms already have programs in place to prevent this and other types of mortgage fraud as well as contract terms to put back mortgages in such situations to the primary lender. For the past several years, OFHEO has been working with the two firms as they have continued to improve these anti-fraud programs.

Well, yes. Nobody has any incentive to knowingly purchase or guarantee fraudulent mortgages. If you know about it, you are party to it, and that put-back thing doesn't work. Does Lockhart seriously wish us to believe that there are no economic incentives for anybody to work extremely hard on not knowing what is going on, while still allowing it to go on because there's money in them transactions?

You do not have to accuse the GSEs of collusion in appraisal fraud to recognize that they have an economic incentive to allow a big counterparty like WaMu to push the envelope on appraisals, and they have a economic incentive to avoid having to "mark" the LTVs of their current outstanding MBS and retained portfolios to a new market (less the "fraud adjustments" on these bad appraisals).

In Lockhart's logic no one would ever have an economic incentive to request inflated appraisals, because no one is ultimately safe from having to cover the loss. Even nickel and dime mortgage brokers face disgorging loan premia that can bankrupt them, not to mention doing some time in the county jail, which is not "economic" for a small self-employed business person.

I argued a while back that the real problem with stated income lending--which the GSEs are implicated in as well as those private issuers Lockhart doesn't want the GSEs to be lumped in with--is that it allows lenders to make very high-risk loans without having to admit they're doing it, and it sets up a bagholder: the borrower who lied. To the accusation that lenders obviously allowed themselves to be lied to, the retort is that "we have no economic incentive" to be lied to. Sure you do.

Low processing costs. Inexpensive due diligence practices. Lower reserves based on "stated" DTIs and LTVs. Ability to compete with other lenders by offering "faster approval" (no hang-ups over the appraisal!) or lower closing costs (no expensive charge for an experienced independent appraiser when you get some appraisal-mill product for cheap). And on and on. How are these not "economic incentives" for the whole industry to know what is going on while not "knowing" what is going on? It's like no one ever heard of the concept of plausible deniability.

I am not suggesting that the GSEs intentionally colluded with anyone to produce bad appraisals. I actually do think they try harder than most other parties to weed that stuff out, precisely because they are motivated to limit their credit losses. But Lockhart himself names the major mechanism in play: put backs. That means that the GSEs manage their risks to the extent that their counterparties will agree to take the risks instead. And that means that if and when a counterparty gets in trouble over the risks it's taking, the GSEs have to put back nuclear waste at the exact time that doing so could conceivably ruin the counterparty, whose warranties on the other eleventy-jillion loans that don't have bad appraisals are now worthless.

Of course Fannie and Freddie don't want to participate in what could potentially be the ruin of WaMu or any other of their major counterparties. I have to think that Cuomo knows that and intentionally created this situation where they now cannot not participate in the investigation. If so, that's because he recognizes an "economic incentive" that Lockhart apparently wants to not know about.

by Calculated Risk on 11/08/2007 11:52:00 PM

From the NY Times: Stores See Shoppers in Retreat

Consumers have rendered a verdict on the coming holiday season: grim.

From discounters like Wal-Mart to luxury emporiums like Nordstrom, the nation’s biggest chains reported the weakest October in 12 years yesterday.
...
Sales at stores open at least a year, a crucial yardstick in retailing, rose just 1.6 percent last month, the slowest growth since October 1995, according to the International Council of Shopping Centers. The poor results — on the heels of a dismal September — have made this one of the worst fall shopping seasons in decades.

From the WSJ: 'Affordable Luxury' Stores Feel Economy's Pinch

Yesterday Nordstrom Inc. reported a rare 2.4% drop in October same-store sales, steeper than the 1% decline many analysts had expected. Morgan Stanley analyst Michelle Clark this week downgraded Nordstrom's shares to "underweight," the equivalent of a sell rating, citing weaker spending by the affluent middle class, rising credit-card delinquencies and the luxury retailer's exposure to risky housing markets in California and elsewhere.

How long will the slowdown last? From the NY Times article:

“We expect the challenging retail environment to continue for the foreseeable future,” [Myron E. Ullman III, chief executive of J. C. Penney] said.

The housing slump is definitely hurting consumer spending in Florida, Nevada, Arizona, and California - all states that are in or near recession - and probably impacting spending in many other places too.

We need to keep watching Mortgage Equity Withdrawal (MEW). MEW is probably declining sharply in Q4 with tighter lending standards and falling house prices, and that will likely directly impact consumer spending. In simpler terms, the Home ATM is running out of cash.

note: the advance MEW estimate suggests that MEW was still been pretty strong in Q3.

by Calculated Risk on 11/08/2007 05:59:00 PM

Tanta wrote another incredible and timely post this morning: WaMu and The Rep War

IMO Tanta's posts on the mortgage industry are the most informative anywhere, and I suggest checking them out at Tanta's The Compleat UberNerd (a directory of her posts). These posts cover Mortgage Servicing, Private Mortgage Insurance, Reverse Mortgages, Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS) and much more.

You can also click on the The Compleat UberNerd in the menu at the top of the blog to access this directory.

Felix Salmon, at Market Movers on Portfolio.com had this to say yesterday about Tanta:

"Tanta is one of the best financial writers in the world, and explains complex ideas with wit and great clarity."

I couldn't agree more. Enjoy her posts!