In the last quarter, for instance, Fannie and Freddie posted combined net earnings of $5.1 billion – most of which was swept into a Treasury account.

Bob Behal, a principal and co-head of ABS and commercial MBS investments at Vanguard Group, said liquidity in the market is fair.

Tozer believes that with depositories in control of the Ginnie market, the regulation of lender/servicers has essentially been outsourced to banking regulators who have “vast experience” in safety and soundness.

Why short Altisource? This source reasons that as real estate values continue to improve and foreclosures slow, Altisource will have less to do going forward...

SIFMA did not take a stance on whether g-fees should be adjusted up or down. Instead, the trade group stressed that it is unclear how a change to g-fees would impact non-agency activity.

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee this week met Wall Street’s expectations that it will continue to plow principal payments from its holdings of agency MBS back into agency MBS until sometime after the central bank decides to raise its federal funds target range. “The timing will depend on how economic and financial conditions and the economic outlook evolve,” said the FOMC after its two-day meeting concluded Wednesday afternoon. In the meantime, the Fed’s tapering of its quantitative easing program will continue...

The non-agency MBS market remains stuck in the post-crisis doldrums, showing no signs of recovering, according to experts participating at this week’s Bipartisan Policy Center’s Housing Summit in Washington, DC. Efforts to ignite the growth in non-agency securitization channels to help reduce the government’s role in housing finance and draw back private capital have produced little result. Except for sporadic twitches, thanks to a smattering of deals backed by jumbo loans, the non-agency MBS market is barely alive, panelists said. The government, which is working to revive the non-agency market, sees...

Moody’s Investors Service – which has been on the sidelines in the sputtering jumbo MBS market this year – has edged up to become the most active rating service in the non-mortgage ABS market, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. Moody’s rated 71 ABS over the first half of the year, deals with a total issuance volume of $66.15 billion. That represented 64.5 percent of total non-mortgage ABS issued in the first six months of 2014. Moody’s had its biggest market shares in vehicle finance ABS and student loan deals. Standard & Poor’s ranked...[Includes two data charts]

Commercial banks hate mortgages. No, they don't. Yes, they do. No they don't. Yes, they do...

Congress should put the screws to the Treasury Department to disclose all documents pertaining to the origins of the Obama administration’s controversial “net-worth sweep” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits, according to a coalition of right-leaning public policy groups. In a letter dispatched late this week to the top Republican and Democrat of the House Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, the 17 groups led by the Competitive Enterprise Institute urged lawmakers to intervene to impose transparency over what GSE shareholders consider an extra-legal maneuver by the executive branch.