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February 8, 2008
Mortgage
Lending
name='1'>Study: Bankruptcy Law Change Won’t Affect Mortgage
Interest
A recent study found that
legislation to allow bankruptcy judges to “strip down” a
secured mortgage loan, or reduce the loan claim to the home’s
value and grant the lender an unsecured claim for the loan’s
interest, would have “little or no impact” on mortgage
interest rates, Dow Jones’
size='3'>Daily Bankruptcy Review reported
today. The study by Georgetown University Professor Adam J. Levitin and
Joshua Goodman rebuts the mortgage industry’s claim that borrowing
costs would surge. “Permitting unlimited strip-down would have a
nonexistent, or a very, very small, impact on mortgage interest
rates,” Levitin said. He noted that the study found that such a
strip-down raised mortgage interest by a scant 5 to 15 basis points, or
0.05 to 0.15 percentage point. Levitin said that, because strip-down had
such an insignificant effect on mortgage interest rates when it was
allowed without limits, the current (and more limited) legislation would
have an even smaller effect. He said that the bills would only allow
judges to modify nontraditional loans for chapter 13 debtors.
“Because of these proposed limitations, the pending legislation
would likely have an even smaller impact than the unlimited strip-down
regime we tested,” according to the study.
href='http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=adam_levitin'>Click
here to read the study.
name='2'>Prosecutors Widen Probes into Wall Street’s Subprime
Mortgage Activities
Federal criminal
prosecutors are stepping up their interest in Wall Street's
mortgage-securities activities as the Department of Justice notified the
Securities and Exchange Commission that it wants to see information the
agency is gathering in its investigation of Merrill Lynch & Co.,
the Wall Street
Journal reported today. The SEC is examining
whether the securities firm booked inflated prices of mortgage bonds it
held despite knowledge that the valuations had dropped. The move by
the
face='Times New Roman'
size='3'>U.S.
size='3'>attorney's office comes as the SEC has upgraded its Merrill
probe to a formal investigation, which requires approval of the full
commission and gives the agency broad power to require firms and
individuals to produce information.
href='http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB120244312394153109.html'>Read
more. (Registration required.)
size='3'>Legislation Targets Credit Card Interest
Rates
House Financial Services
Financial Institutions Subcommittee Chairwoman
size='3'>Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) unveiled a
measure yesterday that would crack down on questionable credit card
practices, including language that would require banks to give customers
a 45-day notice of any interest-rate increase,
face='Times New Roman' size='3'>CongressDaily
size='3'>reported today. The bill, co-sponsored by
Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank (D-Mass.), would
give cardholders the right to cancel their cards and pay off their
existing balance at their current interest rate if the interest is
increased. The measure would prohibit other practices such as
double-cycle billing, in which a bank assesses interest on the entire
amount charged during one month unless the bill was paid in full, and
universal default, a practice in which customers are charged a higher
interest rate if they miss a payment on another card or if their credit
score had dropped.
name='4'>Credit Card Pinch Leads Consumers to Rein in
Spending
As credit card
delinquencies mount across the nation, banks have been tightening
lending standards that could result in a sharp pullback in consumer
spending that would further weaken the slowing
w:st='on'>
size='3'>U.S.
size='3'>economy, the
size='3'>Wall Street Journal reported today.
Such a pullback may already be taking shape as the Federal Reserve
reported yesterday that Americans had $944 billion in total revolving
debt, most of it on credit cards, resulting in a seasonally adjusted
annualized increase of 2.7 percent. That was off sharply from seasonally
adjusted growth rates of 13.7 percent in November and 11.1 percent in
October. In December, an average of 7.6 percent of credit card loans
were either at least 60 days delinquent or had gone into default, up
from 6.4 percent a year earlier, according to research firm RiskMetrics
Group. The analysis includes a broad swath of more than $200 billion of
credit-card loans that are sold off to investors by major card issuers
like Citigroup Inc., Capital One Financial Corp., American Express Co.
and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
href='http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB120243324726552445.html'>Read
more. (Registration required.)
name='5'>Congress Approves Stimulus Package
Congress gave
overwhelming final approval last night to legislation that would deliver
government payments to most American households and grant tax incentives
for business investment, sending President Bush a $152 billion stimulus
plan for the faltering
w:st='on'>
size='3'>U.S.
size='3'>economy, the
size='3'>Washington Post reported today. The
deal came yesterday after the Senate added low-income seniors and
disabled veterans to the list of people who would receive money under a
package previously approved by the House, then approved the bill, 81 to
16. The House took up and passed the Senate measure last night in a 380
to 34 vote, ensuring that checks would begin reaching recipients by
mid-May.
href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/07/AR2008020700630_pf.html'>Read
more.
Director Questions GSE Proposal
A federal regulator
yesterday suggested that a measure that would allow Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac to take on jumbo mortgages could divert loan money from less
expensive housing, the
size='3'>Washington Post reported today. At a
Senate Banking Committee hearing yesterday, James B. Lockhart III, the
director of the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO),
said that funding one $600,000 mortgage takes as much capital as funding
three $200,000 loans. The economic stimulus package passed by Congress
last night would temporarily permit District-based Fannie Mae and
McLean-based Freddie Mac to buy or guarantee mortgages 25 percent higher
than an area's median home price -- to a maximum of $729,750, up from
the current limit of $417,000. Lockhart testified that the change would
push the companies deeper into some of the riskiest real estate markets,
including parts of
w:st='on'>
size='3'>California
size='3'>.
href='http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/07/AR2008020703972_pf.html'>Read
more.
href='http://banking.senate.gov/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&HearingID=290'>Click
here to read written testimony from the Senate Banking Committee
hearing
name='7'>Tweeter Seeks Delay on Chapter 11 Plan
Tweeter Home
Entertainment Group Inc. said that it needs more time to analyze claims
and assess its financial condition before developing a chapter 11 plan
to divvy up proceeds from its sale to a
w:st='on'>
York hedge fund, the
Associated Press reported yesterday. In light of the 'recent' sale
closing and the significant claims that are unresolved, Tweeter said in
a court filing on Tuesday that it deserves another four months to
prepare a liquidation plan without the threat of rival plans. The former
electronics retailer is seeking to extend its exclusive right to file a
plan through June 5. The period was set to expire Wednesday, but is
automatically stretched through March 3 when the U.S. Bankruptcy Court
in
size='3'>Wilmington,
w:st='on'>
size='3'>Del.
hearing on the company's request.
size='3'>The company is also asking the court to extend its exclusive
right to solicit plan votes through Aug. 4 from April 7.
href='http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080207/tweeter_bankruptcy.html?.v=1'>Read
more.
name='8'>Plastech Receives Approval to Draw from $30 Million DIP
Loan
Bankruptcy Judge
Phillip J. Shefferly
approved a $30.25 million debtor-in-possession (DIP) loan
on Wednesday for Plastech Engineered Products Inc.,
face='Times New Roman' size='3'>Bankruptcy Law360
size='3'>reported yesterday. Plastech’s DIP funding will be
provided by a group of the company’s prepetition lenders, with
Bank of America NA serving as collateral and administrative agent. In
addition to Bank of America, Plastech's DIP lenders include Comerica
Bank, Wachovia Capital Finance Corp., Wells Fargo Foothill Inc., Fifth
Third Bank, PNC Bank NA and General Electric Capital Corp.
A final hearing on Plastech’s DIP motion has been
scheduled for Feb. 27.
href='http://bankruptcy.law360.com/Secure/ViewArticle.aspx?id=46330'>Read
more. (Registration required.)
The New York Racing
Association is asking for few extra weeks to control its bankruptcy case
as it awaits action from the state legislature to pass a law crucial to
its chapter 11 reorganization plan, the Associated Press reported
yesterday. NYRA on Wednesday asked the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in
size='3'>Manhattan
extension to exclusively file its reorganization plan to March 7 from
Monday. Even though the association has already filed a plan and its
creditors have voted in favor of the plan's confirmation, NYRA wants to
make sure competing parties aren't able to offer rival plans. Bankruptcy
Judge James M.
Peck scheduled a hearing for next week to
consider NYRA's request and extended its exclusivity over the three days
between the current expiration date and the hearing. NYRA said the state
supports its request.
href='http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5523159.html'>Read
more.
href='http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/5523159.html'>
KB
Home, Countrywide Face Suit from Buyers
Two couples in
size='3'>California
suing home builder KB Home and its joint venture with mortgage lender
Countrywide Financial, alleging that the companies and two appraisers
inflated home values to conceal the declining market, the
Wall Street Journal
reported today. The lawsuit alleges that the appraisal
reports cited pending sales as comparable sales, even when the sales
were no longer pending because the buyers had walked away from the
deals. The lawsuit also alleges that appraisals used 'dissimilar
properties' in other developments as comparable sales instead of
'neighboring, identical comparable sales' -- which would have resulted
in a lower value. The lawsuit also seeks class-action status for KB Home
buyers who purchased homes in
w:st='on'>
size='3'>California
obtained a mortgage through the builder's venture with Countrywide
between Aug. 1, 2005, and July 31, 2006.
href='http://online.wsj.com/article_print/SB120244250990753129.html'>Read
more. (Registration required.)
name='11'>Bond Raters Look to Repair Credibility
Under fire for their role
in the mortgage crisis, Standard & Poor’s and Moody’s
Corp. are scrambling to restore confidence in their credit ratings,
the New York
Times reported today. S& P said that it
planned to collect more information about the processes used by issuers
and originators to assess the accuracy of their data and their
fraud-detection measures. Moody’s said that
size='3'>it was weighing proposals to change its ratings for
structured-finance bonds, which are backed by mortgages and other loans.
The effort by the ratings companies is taking place amid investigations
by regulators, such as New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, looking
into how the ratings agencies assigned top triple-A ratings to many
bonds backed by risky subprime home loans. While his office has not
filed any charges, Cuomo specifically wants to know if the firms asked
for and received information that would have warned them about specific
risks associated with home mortgages.
href='http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/business/08ratings.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&pagewanted=print'>Read
more.
href='http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/08/business/08ratings.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&ref=business&pagewanted=print'>