News Topic: CreditSlips

Housing Wire is reporting that Federal Housing Finance Agency , the conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has launched a new loan modification program. The program is a major departure from HAMP and HARP (thankfully!). It puts mortgage servicers in ... Read full article

Lauren Willis has joined us for the last month as a guest blogger, and in her most recent post thanked us for allowing her to "use our soap box." You're very welcome, Lauren, but we really don't want you to leave.  We're happy to ... Read full article

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The Chicago Tribune is running a Reuters story  describing a study from Equifax that student loan write-offs totaled $3 billion in the first quarter of 2013. It's an impressive study. According to the story, "Equifax analyzes data from more than ... Read full article

Thank you to the Credit Slips team for allowing me to use their soapbox for the last few weeks.  I leave you with a final pet peeve: Why does the government have to rely on commercially-collected financial industry data sets or voluntary surveys of ... Read full article

Some thoughts on the bankruptcy of solar panel maker Suntech, at Dealb%k . ... Read full article

That is the finding of a report released yesterday by the Inspector General of FHFA , the agency that oversees our nationalized mortgage funders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Mortgage servicers are paid incentives by Freddie for quick foreclosures, but not ... Read full article

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Some thoughts on Cyprus, over at Dealb%k . ... Read full article

So just a bit more information on garnishing social security and other public benefits now people who know more about that than I do have joined the conversation. Basically 42 U.S.C. § 407(a) has always precluded creditors (other than the IRS for taxes or ... Read full article

A key point is at risk of getting buried in all the din surrounding Cyprus's deposit levy (apparently poised for parliamentary defeat ). To me it comes through most clearly in the  latest from the tornado-chasing (or front-running ?) duo, Lee ... Read full article

Stepping back from the Cyprus bail-in, I'm wondering if it is penny-wise, pound-foolish. The depositor tax is only supposed to raise about $7.25 billion (5.8 billion Euros).  Given the risks created by a bailout being rejected and the risk of runs ... Read full article

Jonathan Ginsberg posted an interesting article on the National Association of Chapter 13 trustees web site this weekend, that will be relevant to many of our readers as well. ... Read full article

Reflecting on my last two posts – price caps, loan structure requirements, underwriting rules – discussing any of these puts the cart before the horse. We know we want to rein in risk without cutting off access to credit that is not too risky. But how ... Read full article

Anyone want to take bets on whether there will be runs on Italian, Spanish, and Portugese deposits? That's my bet. I'm not sure that we'll see small retail depositor runs, but I would predict that high dollar deposits in all of those ... Read full article

Cyprus seems to be the next European domino to fall to bailoutitis.  Here's the situation as I understand it. Cyprus has unmanageable government debt, not least because of the liabilities that stem from supporting the insolvent banking sector. The EU ... Read full article

In the last post I discussed the potential benefits of price caps in the small loan market, one of which was to bring the price down to what consumer price shopping would produce if it were present in that market. Now I would like to turn to the potential ... Read full article

Black smoke ... White smoke? ... Argentina wins! ... Nope, black smoke ... Can you stand the suspense? ... the whiplash? One day, Second Circuit judges slap down Argentina . ... Read full article