Tag Archives: Standard & Poor’s

Ain’t Misrepresentin’

Posted on by

According to Wikipedia, the performers in the musical Ain’t Misbehavin’ “present an evening of rowdy, raunchy, and humorous songs that encapsulate the various moods of the era and reflect” a “view of life as a journey meant for pleasure and play.” In U.S. RMBS Roundtable: Arrangers And Investors Discuss The Role Of Representations And Warranties In U.S. RMBS Transactions, S&P does something similar with securitization. It presents the views of industry players as they try to predict and shape the future of the recently emerging private-label RMBS market, in the hopes of “achieving a healthy and sustainable RMBS market.” (2)

ACT I:  Lookin’ Good but Feelin’ Bad

https://fashion.henryfoxrecruitment.com/cats/

The piece contains a lot of important insights, including the following point made by investors: “standardizing R&Ws would be a step towards improving the transparency and their ease of understanding. Smaller investors noted that they can be particularly limited in distinguishing R&Ws given the complexities involved.” (3)

This point encapsulates in so many words the classic market for lemons problem, famously formalized by George Akerlof.  The lemon problem leads us to ask how a buyer is to price a purchase where the buyer has less information about the product than the seller.  Because of this information assymetry, the purchaser will assume the worst about the product and offer to buy it with that in mind.

R&Ws are an attempt to overcome that problem because the RMBS arranger or the mortgage originator promises to compensate the investor for lemons that are contained with a mortgage pool securing an RMBS. Consistent with that view, investors noted that “they expected to be compensated for losses caused by origination defects, rather than legitimate life events.” (2) In other words, origination defects are the lemons that should be borne by the arranger/originator with its superior information about the mortgages. And “legitimate life events” represent the credit risk that the investors have signed up for.

ACT II:  That Ain’t Right

Arrangers and originators made the following points:

  1. [o]ne arranger indicated that the R&W process should be governed only by the contractual obligations negotiated for each deal. (2)
  2. [o]riginators have strict underwriting guidelines and said they take great care to follow those procedures before issuing a loan. Arrangers are also currently subjecting all or almost all loans to a third-party due-diligence review. (2)
  3. arrangers said that standardizing R&Ws will not be an easy task as differences between arrangers and product types will limit the degree to which R&Ws can be homogenized. (3)

These points clearly align with the interests of the seller in a market for lemons.  To restate them a bit, 1. caveat emptor; 2. arrangers and originators don’t sell lemons (!); and (3) it is too hard to come up with provisions that consistently protect investors so don’t bother trying.

ENCORE:  Find Out What They Like

S&P notes that there “was broad agreement that one of the keys to achieving a healthy and sustainable RMBS market is aligning the interests of arrangers and investors.” (2) From that broader perspective, S&P is right that the industry should work toward a state of affairs that “minimizes the cost of unknown risks and ultimately reduces losses and related litigation.” (2) Given the spate of lawsuits over reps and warranties, we had fallen shy of that mark in the past (here, for example).  It remains to be seen if the industry can get it better next time and if the incentives are aligned enough to do so.

 

The Weak Can Never Forgive?

Posted on by

S&P has issued a report, Principal Forgiveness, Still The Best Way To Limit U.S. Mortgage Redefaults, Is Becoming More Prevalent, that asserts that its research “demonstrates the likelihood that servicers will recover a greater portion of their receivables through principal forgiveness versus other modification tools,” such as rate modification. (5) In particular, the authors found that as of March of 2013, “loans that received a principal reduction maintained the highest percentage (about 76%) of current-pay borrowers. By contrast, on average less than 50% of loans outstanding that received a modification other than principal forgiveness remained current.” (4)

I am not sure that their research actually demonstrates a causal connection between principal modification and recoveries as opposed to just providing a correlation between the two.  This perhaps naive analysis does, in any event, raise interesting and important questions about the efficacy of modifications.

And modifications are increasing.  Indeed, as of “February of this year, more than 1.5 million homeowners have received a permanent modification through the U.S. federal government’s Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).” (1) Since last year, there has been “22% rate of growth in the number of modifications on an additional $2.4 billion in mortgage debt.” (1) Among the big five servicers, “principal forgiveness, as a percentage of average modifications performed on a monthly basis, has increased by about 200% since the latter half of 2011.” (1) And since 2009, “servicers have forgiven principal on approximately $45 billion of outstanding non-agency mortgages.” (1)

At the beginning of the crisis, many were terrified about the impact that principal modification would have on investors. FHFA Acting Director DeMarco was also concerned about the impact of Fannie and Freddie principal reductions on taxpayers. With a new Director for FHFA on the horizon, there might be a change of direction on this.

Gandhi said that forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.  Perhaps, our housing market is now strong enough to contemplate some serious loan forgiveness.

S&P Myth #1: No One Could Have Known

Posted on by

S&P filed its Memorandum in Support of Defendants’ Motion To Dismiss the DoJ lawsuit filed back in February. The memorandum states that S&P’s inability, along with other market participants, “to predict the extent of the most catastrophic meltdown since the Great Depression reveals” only “a lack of prescience” and “not fraud.” (1) This short phrase requires some serious unpacking.

First, it ignores the fact that many of the analysts who engaged in fact-based investigations of the rated securities were sounding warnings but were overruled by higher ups who demanded that market share be maintained.  So if S&P and “other market participants” is defined to exclude all of those analysts, risk officers, underwriters and due diligence providers that worked for all of those market participants, then S&P is certainly right.  But if plaintiffs can demonstrate that facts were ignored to the extent that short term profits would be hurt by them, then S&P’s characterization is less compelling.

A second related point is that S&P’s argument that “its views were consistent with those of virtually every other market participant” is not compelling if plaintiffs can demonstrate that it ignored the facts before it and the findings of its own models.

Finally, its characterization of the Subprime Bust as “the most catastrophic meltdown since the Great Depression” fails to acknowledge that an S&P AAA rating offers quite the stamp of approval:  “An issuer or obligation rated ‘AAA’ should be able to withstand an extreme level of stress and still meet its financial obligations. A historical example of such a scenario is the Great Depression in the U.S.”  (The quote is from S&P’s website and can be accessed here on page 58.) But mortgage-backed securities with that S&P triple A did not quite live up to their promise.

This is not to say that S&P has not raised serious legal issues with Justice’s complaint in its motion to dismiss, but just that its rationalizations of its own behavior (which echo those of Dick Fuld and many others at the helm of various “market participants”) don’t stand up against the record.