Listen to the Joystiq Podcast (because your ears can't read)

AOL Money & Finance

FDIC working on plan to guarantee mortgages to stem home foreclosures

More

Most economists agree that keep global financial markets liquid - - and filled with dollars - - is an important part of the effort to end the global financial crisis.

Further, along with the removal of toxic assets from bank and financial institution (FI) balance sheets, stemming the rise in home foreclosures among borrowers capable of servicing their mortgages is another key to ending both the financial crisis and the home foreclosure/asset price decline cycle, many economists agree.

Moreover, it looks like federal officials and banks - - after a slow start - - will launch a new, major program to keep more families in their homes. The federal government may start guaranteeing home mortgages to persuade lenders to modify home loans, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation said, Reuters reported Friday.

FDIC Chairwoman Sheila Bair said that under a program her agency and the U.S. Treasury Department are working on, a bank/lender would be required to significantly drop the interest rate, reduce the principal or extend the life of affected loans, The Washington Post reported Friday. In return, the bank/lender would get a government guarantee that the mortgage would be repaid.

Bair, in testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, could not provide an estimate regarding how much the program would cost, but underscored that the bank rescue program passed by Congress earlier this month give the Treasury power to use loan guarantees and credit enhancements to modify loans to prevent avoidable foreclosures, Reuters reported Friday.


Need: both top-down and bottom-up efforts

Economist Richard Felson told BloggingStocks Friday he backs the Treasury's/FDIC effort, arguing that financial market stabilization can not occur until the housing market stabilizes, and that requires a decline in foreclosures.

"Foreclosures are at the root of the toxic asset problem. Simply we have to keep more people capable of servicing their mortgages in their homes, or more bonds will go bad, spill over to bank balance sheets, and the whole bankruptcy/credit crunch cycle will continue," Felson said. "I don't know why more wasn't done sooner to refinance mortgages under stress. Perhaps it was a preference for a top-down approach to help the banks first, but the important thing is that we need both top-down and bottom up and it looks like we're going to finally get it."

Housing Sector/Economic Analysis: In this case, 'there are two ways about it': the Treasury has to help banks to make sure they have sufficient liquidity, and it also has to provide guarantees and/or funds to help banks refinance mortgages to end the rise in preventable foreclosures. We're still young in this crisis, but initial reports certainly point to home foreclosures as the 'negative economic data point of the era' that triggered the global financial crisis.

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Symbol Lookup
IndexesChangePrice
DJIA-223.328,280.74
NASDAQ-49.201,796.52
S&P 500-26.91896.42

Last updated: July 06, 2009: 05:44 AM

BloggingStocks Exclusives

Hot Stocks

DailyFinance Headlines

Latest from BloggingBuyouts

TheFlyOnTheWall.com Headlines

BioHealth Investor Headlines

WalletPop Headlines

My Portfolios

Track your stocks here!

Find out why more people track their portfolios on AOL Money & Finance then anywhere else.

BloggingStocks Partners

More from AOL Money & Finance

WalletPop Headlines