Battle for the City of London Tips in Favor of the Queen; Poland to the Rescue

A short time ago, the financial relevance of the UK seemed in jeopardy, but two events announced only yesterday suggest the Square Mile will remain a major player in international trading, at least for the time being. First, the board of LCH.Clearnet, the country's largest counterparty clearinghouse, announced it had approved a buyout offer from the London Stock Exchange, edging out a materially lower offer from Markit, with a shareholder vote to determine the final outcome. Jeremy Grant explained a salient point earlier in the month in the Financial Times (emphasis ours):

But what about SwapClear, the over-the-counter (OTC) interest rate swaps clearing service under LCH.Clearnet?

While LCH.Clearnet books OTC derivatives revenues on its accounts from the SwapClear service, this does not tell the full story on where SwapClear profits go. Some [profits] go to the OTC derivatives dealer-banks that form a curious governance mechanism for SwapClear, known as OTCDerivNet. The amount of profit that goes to these banks is dictated by a sliding scale of thresholds set out in an arrangement between LCH.Clearnet and the banks, revised last year.

It is a glass bead game that few even in the industry understand, but the bottom line is that any LSE deal with LCH.Clearnet would probably have to allow SwapClear to be ring-fenced somehow to allow the banks to carry on. I can’t see the SwapClear banks represented on the LCH.Clearnet board being enthusiastic, either, about exchange control of LCH.Clearnet (which is what you’d get if the LSE wants 51 per cent).

This is one hurdle that Markit, the LSE’s rival bidder, does not face. Perhaps that is why the LSE has offered a knock-out €21 a share price for LCH.Clearnet, above Markit’s €15 offered for 100 per cent of LCH.Clearnet.

So, the big London banks on the LCH board capitulated. But why? Perhaps they read the proverbial handwriting on the wall, as power centers on the Continent were jostling for a carrot-and-stick-induced LCH crossing of the channel. If London were to lose LCH, the Deutsche Borse/NYSE Euronext faction might shift the occidental financial axis firmly along a New York/Frankfurt line.

The carrot was that the EU is currently considering giving clearing houses access to central bank liquidity in a crisis (i.e., ECB bailout funds), similar to the arrangement between the Federal Reserve and the DTCC and CLS Bank. The stick was that the ECB would require clearing activities to be conducted within the EU (sic Germany) as a precondition to access, which would require a re-domicile of LCH on the Continent. On September 15, the UK threatened to sue the ECB over the issue, but only yesterday, the tide turned, as Poland intervened (emphasis ours):

Derivatives clearinghouses such as LCH.Clearnet Group Ltd. may face less pressure to move parts of their business from the U.K. to the euro area as European Union negotiators seek to resolve a clash between Britain and the European Central Bank.

Poland, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, proposed changing a draft law on over-the-counter derivatives so that “no member state or a group of member states should be discriminated, directly or indirectly, as a venue for clearing services,” according to the document posted on an EU website. The U.K. said “there are a number of issues” requiring discussion before Britain can sign off on the law.

The new wording was added to negotiating texts after the U.K. said on Sept. 15 that it would sue the ECB over its plans to prevent some euro-denominated securities from being cleared outside the 17 countries that share the currency. The text was added to ease U.K concerns that the ECB may push for clearinghouses to relocate, according to an EU official familiar with the talks who couldn’t be identified because negotiations on the measures are private.

Bloomberg continues:

‘Highly Unclear’

“It is highly unclear whether the ECB has the power to make policy like it did in the July paper,” Damian Carolan, a lawyer at Allen & Overy LLP, said in a phone interview from London. “People were quite surprised how far it felt its jurisdiction to extend.”

The Polish proposal would put the U.K. “in a far stronger position in saying that the ECB has gone outside its remit,” Carolan said. “I don’t think it brings you legal certainty but it brings this policy decision clearly into the legal framework.”

The U.K. lawsuit hasn’t been officially registered with the EU Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

Clearinghouses such as LCH.Clearnet and Deutsche Boerse AG’s Eurex Clearing operate as central counterparties for every buy and sell order executed by their members, who post collateral, reducing the threat from a trader’s default.

The derivatives rules are scheduled to be discussed at a meeting of EU diplomats on Sept. 29, according to the EU official. Draft EU laws need approval from the European Parliament and national governments before they can take effect.

The seemingly unlikely bridge between the UK and Poland is made by Poland's finance minister, Jacek Rostowski, a "British-born economist and academic...[who]...will now chair meetings of EU finance ministers and hopes to take part in critical talks among euro-zone finance ministers." A hardliner for EU solidarity (though Poland has itself yet to join the euro), he has pushed strongly for the Greecian bailout and an IMF-style approach that, at least initially, favors growth over austerity. What concessions or favors he might have wrung from the UK are unknown, but we would not be surprised to see a British role in the EFSF cum pan-European bond, once the twin Hungarian calls for a crisis come to fruition.

Regardless, the LSE's vert just improved by a few inches. Not enough for a slam dunk, but enough to maneuver in the paint.

John Tsang Does Chicago

Hong Kong FinSec, John Tsang wrapped up his world tour this week in Chicago, meeting with some movers and shakers in both the political and financial realms (emphasis ours):

: FS promotes HK in Chicago

Sep 27, 2011 (M2 PRESSWIRE via COMTEX) --

Financial Secretary John Tsang continued the final leg of his US visit by meeting President and Chief Executive Officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Charles Evans in Chicago yesterday.

They discussed Hong Kong's unique role as an offshore centre for renminbi banking, renminbi trade settlement and the issuance of renminbi bonds.

He called on Chinese Consul-General Yang Guoqiang, before visiting the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to meet its Executive Chairman Terrence Duffy.

He also called on Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel before attending an event to celebrate Cathay Pacific's launch of daily non-stop passenger flights between Hong Kong and Chicago.

Mr Tsang will visit Caterpillar Inc today before returning to Hong Kong.

Press Love Fest for NY Attorney General Schneiderman Ignites; Will He Be the One to Lock Up Goldman's Blankfein?

We mentioned the rising star of Eric Schneiderman the other day, wondering who was pulling his strings in the fight against the big banks. The next day, Ben Smith, of Politico asked, "Is Eric Schneiderman America's most powerful liberal?"

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman was too busy running for office during the first two years of the Obama presidency to really pay much attention.

“Obama ran on this visionary platform, and then something happened, between the time I started campaigning and the time I finished campaigning,” he recalled in an interview in the spacious, sparsely furnished office he won last year, around the corner from the New York Stock Exchange. “But it certainly looked different in December of last year than in June of ‘09.”

By that time, Schneiderman, a trim, impatient liberal, was preparing to be sworn in to a jobEliot Spitzer turned into the terror of Wall Street. And he was almost perfectly placed - and almost perfectly suited by temperament and ideology - to be one of the ringleaders of a nascent, post-Obama left, a kind of liberal tea party.

A New Yorker who represented the Manhattan’s Upper West Side, writes for The Nation, and has spent a decade fighting his party’s moderates, Schneiderman found himself in the position of being one of the few public officials who could try to erase an act that was the key root cause of early progressive disappointment with Obama: his relatively gentle handling of Wall Street in the wake of the 2008 economic crisis.

Just months after he took office, Schneiderman reversed the position of his predecessor - current Gov. Andrew Cuomo - and rang the alarm on a settlement being negotiated by 50 state attorneys-general he saw as too lenient toward the big banks.

Reading on, we learn the big banks might be in for a good old fashioned fishing expedition (emphasis ours):

There are sharp disputes over theory and facts in the bank settlement talks, and the reality can be hard to tease out from unreleased letters between the banks and the states and off-the-record, talks. As Schneiderman tells it, he became alarmed soon after taking office at what he saw as a failure do demand more internal bank documents, and at suggestions that the banks would be able to settle not just narrow issues around the handling of foreclosures, but broad questions about the securitization of sub-prime loans that underlay the 2008 crisis.

“I was concerned about the scope of the investigation that had been conducted, and I was concerned about what kind of release the banks wanted,” he said. “I wasn’t going to release claims that hadn’t been investigated.”

Miller says the AGs and federal agencies have copious files on the housing crisis, and bridled in particular at Schneiderman’s claim that the settlement could ever have included a release from claims involving securitization or other broad issues.

“He’s essentially made that up,” he said of Schneiderman. “The release will center on robosigning and servicing and issues that are closely related to servicing. It’s not going to be a broad release.”

...

Schneiderman argues that a deeper investigation would give the AGs more leverage for a more sweeping settlement, and that this is the last, best chance to get at issues at the heart of the troubled American economy.

“I think a more creative, robust settlement would be a good thing for this economy, and I think a thorough investigation that airs this out is critical for restoring public confidence,” he said.

Schneiderman doesn’t appear likely to back down, and he has deeply unsettled the fragile coalition of attorneys general, with several others joining him to press – demagogically, in Miller’s view – for a narrow release. Spitzer – who regularly calls to advise Schneiderman to follow an activist path – praised him to POLITICO for “continuing the notion that the New York Attorney General is the most effective outspoken voice in an environment where the federal regulatory agencies still haven’t flexed their muscles in a meaningful way.”

The love fest didn't stop there, because one day later, Nina Burleigh at Salon sycophantically asks a similar question, "Is New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman the One to Finally Fight Big Money's Power in Politics?"

Schneiderman, like Obama, comes from the low-drama school of political presentation. He doesn't get red-in-the-face mad. He doesn't seduce. He's earnest and self-effacing and pedagogical. But unlike the president, he has a steady refusal to back down and a ready willingness to fight. He is the antihero that boiling mad progressives hope can manacle and perp-walk those responsible for the financial crisis.

...

As if responding on cue to that taunt, the New York Post reported two days later that one of Schneiderman's staff attorneys had been moonlighting as a dominatrix for hire under the name Alisha Sparks. In her day job, she had negotiated deals with errant bankers, by night she was allegedly taking money to whip submissive men into states of bliss. Schneiderman promptly put her on unpaid leave on the basis of the charge that she had broken the rule against outside employment. His press secretary assured me that Sparks hadn't come anywhere near the current ongoing investigation. But financial bloggers immediately smelled a rat and suggested the outing was just the beginning of a coordinated dirty war on Schneiderman's office as he turns up the heat with bank subpoenas.

For the record, we're against the settlements as well, but just don't believe the Wall St. hero cop story. As always, we simply follow the money.

Salon continues with a few more details on what Schneiderman wants to get his hands on.

Schneiderman said his office is "digging into" earlier phases of the mortgage-backed securities era. "Origination, the pooling of loans by the banks, the securitization, sale," he said, and activities after 2004, when the housing bubble started filling with air, and the numbers of mortgages dropped. "That's when things started to shift and you can see this whole process of -- making money of these securitizations was so profitable, that it didn't stop when it should have stopped."

Around the same time, he noted, investors began scrutinizing MBS more carefully, and diverting money into the more complex but also troubled collateralized debt obligations. As everyone knows in hindsight, the quality of mortgages deteriorated, the quality of securities deteriorated, and it all collapsed. "We are looking at what caused that to happen and what people were doing and what people knew," he said.

If anyone has data on mortgage-related securitization volumes going back to 2004, we'd love to see 'em. But, off the top of our head, we can think of one investment bank cum Federal Reserve member bank that was a leader in securitization "innovation" around that time, and which would be a coup for a rising AG to take down. Yes, the world's most fashionable bank to hate, Goldman Sachs, and its God's-work-doing CEO, Lloyd Blankfein (who, buy the way, recently hired a criminal defense attorney).

Another Soros-funded Attorney General, Former Rand Paul Opponent Jack Conway, Threatens the Big Bank Settlement

George Soros is just itching for a crisis. A few weeks ago, the NYT reported:

“This crisis has the potential to be a lot worse than Lehman Brothers,” said George Soros, the hedge fund investor, citing the lack of an authoritative pan-European body to handle a banking crisis of this severity. “That is why the problem is so serious. You need a crisis to create the political will for Europe to create such an authority, but there is still no understanding as to what the authority will do.”

The other day, we wondered aloud why the New York Attorney General, Eric Schneiderman, was aggressively blocking the Bank of American and Bank of New York Mellon settlement regarding Countrywide RMBS. Maybe he's just an uncorrupted politician looking out for the best interests of the good investors of New York. Or maybe, he's being pressured by one of his largest campaign contributors, George Soros.

In a separate matter, Schneiderman has also been an active critic of the settlement among the big banks and state attorneys general. Add to that list another recipient of Soros' largess, the AG of Kentucky and none other than Rand Paul's former opponent for US Senate, Jack Conway.

Will Soros get the US leg of his crisis? With all eyes on BAC, focus might soon shift to BNY Mellon. As RC Whalen wrote the other day at the IRA Analyst (behind pay wall now):

We cannot help but wonder if that August 30, 2011 lawsuit by US Bank did not have something to do with the unexplained volatility in the BK CSUITE. "Bank of New York Mellon raised eyebrows after the closing bell Wednesday by announcing the departure of Chairman and Chief ExecutiveRobert Kelly, but analysts say the bank won't miss a beat under new leadership, and the stock didn't either," writes Steve Schafer of Forbes.

Skip a beat or skip away is the question we have in mind. Under Sarbanes-Oxley, the general counsel of BK has an affirmative duty to make members of the board of directors aware of any failure in terms of internal systems and controls or future risks. Looking at the public record, it does not appear that BK has yet acknowledged the problems regarding trustee activities that have been made public by the State of New York.

The auditor of BK as well as the outside counsel to the bank also have affirmative duties to report to the SEC any failure to disclose such risks to investors in the event that the board fails to make such disclosure. Again, we see nothing in the public record indicating any disclosure by BK regarding these allegations by the State of New York. And is it not interesting that the New York AG was not represented at last Friday's meeting of parties in the Countrywide put-back litigation? While the penalties for failure to disclose in the Sarbanes-Oxley law are bad enough, a litigation by the NY AG using the Martin Act is the big shoe waiting to drop on both BAC and BK. What will the NY AG do? Stay tuned.

Stay tuned, indeed. As the only competitor to JP Morgan in the US custodial securities business, BNY Mellon is more of a systemic risk than BAC, and adds an interesting dimension to the current financial crisis.

John Tsang Does New York

After visiting the City of London (and threatening to repatriate HSBC and Standard Chartered, no less), and a pit stop in Edinburgh, Hong Kong Financial Secretary John Tsang landed in the US this week. Tuesday, he met with Blackstone co-founder Stephen Schwarzman, and Wednesday with FRBNY president William Dudley. According to a prior press release, he was to have met with officials at NYSE Euronext. Next up: Chicago, where he will visit the CME, among other places.

http://7thspace.com/headlines/394794/fs_visits_new_york.html

Hong Kong (HKSAR) - The Financial Secretary, Mr John C Tsang, had a busy schedule lined up for the first leg of his visit to the United States in New York today (September 21, New York time).

First, at a breakfast roundtable with American Chinese business leaders and professionals, Mr Tsang gave an update on the latest developments in Hong Kong and enjoyed an open discussion on Hong Kong's unique role as the premier gateway to Mainland China.He called on the business community to grasp the opportunities in Hong Kong.

This was followed by an courtesy call on Consul General of the People's Republic of China in New York, Mr Sun Guoxiang.

He then attended a lunch hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (New York Fed), Mr William C Dudley.Mr Tsang shared with the bankers Hong Kong's development as China's global financial centre and as the offshore centre for Renminbi business, which is supported by the Central Government's national development blueprint, the 12th Five Year Plan.

In the afternoon Mr Tsang visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he was given a guided tour of an exhibition titled "The Art of Dissent in 17th Century China: Masterpieces of Ming Loyalist Art from the Chih Lo Lou Collection", which is being held in collaboration with the Hong Kong Museum of Art.

Yesterday (September 20, New York time), Mr Tsang held a meeting with the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Blackstone, Mr Stephen A Schwarzman.

The New York visit runs from September 19 to 22.Mr Tsang, who is also visiting Washington and Chicago from September 22 to 27, seeks to forge stronger trade ties between Hong Kong and the United States.During the visit he will meet prominent figures from the political, financial and business sectors to discuss the global economy, provide an update on the latest situation in Hong Kong and promote the many unique advantages Hong Kong offers to entrepreneurs.

He will return to Hong Kong on September 28.

Source: HKSAR Government

Latest Fed Rat to Jump Ship Joins [Recently Downgraded] Citi; Cited as Expert in "Europe" and "Emergency Lending Programs"

Bernanke's learning the hard way how the pimpin game is played.

"You know the rules, your economist chose me."

After losing Brian Madigan and David Stockton to retirement, the latest of Bernanke's top three economic advisors to announce departure, Nathan Sheets, has just joined Citi as the firm's Global Head of International Economics. From BusinessWire:

NEW YORK, Sep 22, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Citi today announced that Nathan Sheets has joined the Firm as Global Head of International Economics within Citi's Investment Research & Analysis division. Mr. Sheets will be based in New York. He will report jointly to Citi's Chief Economist, Willem Buiter, and to Citi's Global Head of Investment Research, Andrew Pitt. Mr. Sheets will work with Willem Buiter to lead the Firm's team of international economists, with a special focus on the position of the US in the global economy.

Mr. Sheets joins from the Federal Reserve Board in Washington D.C. where he served as Director of the Division of International Finance and as an Economist to the FOMC. Among his most notable accomplishments, Mr. Sheets acted as the Fed Chairman's international adviser at the onset of the European fiscal crisis in the spring of 2010. He was also a driving force behind the Federal Reserve Board's global emergency lending program.

Mr. Sheets acted as senior advisor to the U.S. Executive Director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) while on leave from the Federal Reserve. In this capacity, he served as a liaison between the IMF and various U.S. government agencies.

Mr. Sheets received his Bachelors of Economics from Brigham Young University and his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"We are excited to welcome Nathan to the firm. He brings with him an innate understanding of global macroeconomic issues and he will provide incredible guidance to our clients," said Andrew Pitt, Global Head of Citi Investment Research & Analysis.

Hamid Biglari, Citicorp Vice Chairman and Head of Emerging Markets and Content, added, "With over 18 years of experience with the Federal Reserve, Nathan's appointment underscores Citi's commitment to bring the highest quality insights to our clients."

Bernanke Bids for Soros' Danish Covered Bonds; Obama to Make Toast

The big news today was not of the twist type, but of another dance number (or slumber) between Bernanke and Obama. As expected, the Fed will be swapping some of its shorter maturity Treasury securities for longer ones into mid-2012, but it will also start purchasing mortgage backed securities again after an eighteen month hiatus.

Since the announcement of so-called QE-Lite (which preceded QE2), the Fed has kept its balance sheet from shrinking by buying Treasury securities with the proceeds from the maturing Agency and Agency MBS bonds it bought during QE1. No longer. The Fed will now purchase more MBS with this money. The question is: why?

With 30 year rates hovering around 4%, hasn't everyone who qualifies for a refinance already done so? And, that's the point. There are millions of homeowners who don't qualify for a refi because of a low credit score, lost job or simply being underwater on their home. To be useful, low mortgage rates need a fiscal side program to get around these hurdles. As Bruce Krasting pointed out several weeks ago, the FHFA, which regulates Fannie and Freddie, is already moving in this direction:

The second thing of note is that late Friday afternoon a was letter released by the FHFA. There was a very significant softening of the language regarding the terms for refinancing:

FHFA is also considering the barriers to refinancing mortgages that would otherwise be HARP eligible but for having a current LTV above 125 percent.

Our objective is to provide borrowers in high-LTV loans who have a history of making on-time mortgage payments with an opportunity to refinance, resulting in reduced credit risk to the Enterprises and added stability to housing.

Bingo! The current ReFi restrictions that require a borrower be no more than 25% underwater and have a 780 FICO are about to be waived.

Krasting continues with more evidence:

The final bit of data comes from the CBO. They did an analysis of what the implications are of big refinancing might be. I contacted the CBO on this and they were very clear that the work they did on this topic was not a report on a specific proposal, but rather a generic review.

It is probably correct that any plan that the administration comes up with will vary in scope from the review by CBO. It is also correct that this review has been done in anticipation of a specific proposal. Therefore the review and the conclusions are worth noting. The key assumptions used in the analysis:

(1) Eligibility includes existing loans guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, or FHA.

(2) A borrower must be current on an existing mortgage and must not have been more than 30 days late on any mortgage payments during the prior year, but there are no limits on the borrower’s current income or on the loan-to-value ratio of the new loan.

(3) The new loan has a fixed rate of interest, at the prevailing market rate, and a term of 30 years.

The CBO has concluded that there are $4.3 trillion of mortgages that broadly meet the above requirements. These mortgages have been converted to Agency MBS. The report looks at what were to happen if 10% in that universe were restructured. The following chart looks at the results.

We can only speculate about the exact details of the program, but conveniently, George Soros has one out of the can. From the Absalon Project website:

Absalon Project (Absalon) will market the Danish Mortgage Solution on a worldwide basis. Absalon is an extension of a partnership between affiliates of VP SECURITIES A/S and Soros Fund Management that was established back in 2005 with the purpose to implement the Danish Mortgage Model in Mexico. This project was successfully carried through with the creation of a mortgage servicing company in Mexico named HiTo that issued the first loans based on the Danish Mortgage Model just before Christmas 2007. Since then HiTo has introduced more loan types to the Mexican market and is issuing loans on a weekly basis, using the solution provided by Absalon.

The Danish way of financing housing through mortgage loans has proven its efficiency and reliability for more than 200 years. It has survived a few crises in its lifetime and also during the current crisis starting in 2008 the Danish Mortgage Model has proven its robustness to the benefit of the borrowers, the investors and the Danish Mortgage Credit Institutions themselves. The project in Mexico has attracted a world wide attention. Combined with the problems that have occurred since the subprime crisis started in the US the Danish Model has gained a lot of interest from all around the world.

Absalon Project was created to capitalize on the experiences from the project in Mexico to offer a solution based on the Danish Mortgage Model to customers on a worldwide basis. The offerings range from initial financial analysis of the possible benefits of introducing the model, over the creation of a Business Plan and Marketing Plan to the delivery of software, services and assistance in setting up the business procedures and the integration of the IT systems.

The US-tailored proposal was released September 1, 2011 and got a nod from RC Whalen, who wrote at ZeroHedge (emphasis ours):

Below is the intro for an important paper by Alan Boyce, Glenn Hubbard, and Chris Mayer, which lays out the finances of the mortgage market in great detail and argues for refinancing of all GSE-covered loans. For home owners, this proposal offers hope to obtain the refinance which is their lawful option but is being denied by the large bank/GSE mortgage cartel.

For investors in RMBS, this proposal is a disaster, a massive pre-payment on vintage RMBS and the loss of tens of billions in net interest margin for the financial system. This paper hopes to shift $70 billion per year from bond investors to consumers and thereby help the economy. The US banking system made $28 billion last quarter. Got your attention now?

-- Chris

Streamlined Refinancings for up to 30 Million Borrowers

By Alan Boyce, Glenn Hubbard, and Chris Mayer

Executive Summary

Frictions in the mortgage market have restricted the ability of tens of millions of borrowers from refinancing their mortgages, hampering monetary policy, slowing the economic recovery, and leading to excessive numbers of foreclosures. We propose a streamlined refinancing program that may benefit up to 30 million borrowers with government-backed mortgages, leading to possible savings of $70 billion per year in lower mortgage payments. Below we describe the current barriers to refinancings, how our plan would overcome these barriers, and why this plan is in the interest of taxpayers, the GSEs, and other mortgage service providers. We also discuss possible critiques and implementation issues and how such issues can be addressed.

1) The problem

a) As of June 2011, more than 75% of GSE3 borrowers with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) have a rate of 5% or more, despite the fact that market-determined mortgage rates have been at or below 5.0% for nearly every month in the past two years and are currently around 4.25%.4 Under normal credit conditions we might have expected three times this many eligible mortgages to have been prepaid, as happened during the last refinancing wave from 2002 to 2003.5 This suggests tens of millions of borrowers have not taken advantage of a seemingly attractive refinancing proposition.

b) We believe that inefficiencies in the origination and servicing process, combined with GSE surcharges (so-called loan level pricing adjustments and adverse market delivery charges), falling home values, and conservative appraisals have made refinancing nearly impossible for most Americans.

c) In addition to blunting refinancing, these mortgage-market frictions are slowing the economic recovery by limiting the benefits of low interest rates for household spending. Unable to refinance their mortgages the way corporations have been able to refinance their debt, consumers are left with weak balance sheets and mortgage payments often above of the cost of renting, contributing to excessive delinquencies and foreclosures. These constraints on refinancing have a disproportionate impact on middle-class borrowers with origination balances under $200,000 and poorer credit and whose employment opportunities have been hit especially hard by the recession.

2) The Offer

a) Every homeowner with a GSE mortgage can refinance his or her mortgage with a new mortgage at a current fixed rate of 4% or less, with the rate subject to change up or down with the price of Agency pass-through Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS). For borrowers with an FHA or VA mortgage, rates would be higher, but these borrowers should be included in any large-scale refinancing program.

b) The homeowner must be current on his or her mortgage or become so for at least three months.

c) NO other qualification or application is required, other than intention to accept the new rate (that is, no appraisal, no income verification, no tax returns, etc.).

Read the rest of the paper at link below:

http://absalonproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/BHM-V11-final.pdf

After the jump, the proposal continues (emphasis ours):

d) Minimal paperwork, other than what is needed legally to refinance in homeowner’s jurisdiction. The Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection may provide a one-page substitute for TILA, RESPA, and HMDA filings to further reduce paperwork and costs.

e) Homeowners can choose between a 15- or 30-year amortization schedules for newly issued mortgages.

f) Homeowners may only refinance existing first-lien mortgage debt and cannot cash out or roll multiple mortgages into the new mortgages.

g) GSEs would be required to issue new MBS in large, highly standardized, transparent, and homogeneous pools, as current Ginnie Mae II Jumbo securities are now issued.

h) Existing servicers would be relieved of their liability for past “Reps and Warranties” violations as long as the mortgage is current today and is at least a year old.

i) Existing second-lien holders would be asked to resubordinate to the newly refinanced first mortgage.8

j) Existing mortgage insurance contracts should be rolled to the new first mortgage.9

k) New title insurance policies must be done in a streamlined process and at low cost, likely a few hundred dollars at most.10

The whole paper is worth a read, and did anyone catch (h) above? That would tidy up some lingering problems, wouldn't it. [In fact, we might be tempted to wonder why New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who's not nearly as anti-Wall Street as his "E.S." predecessor, is so aggressively blocking the BAC and Bank of NY Mellon settlement. We're sure it has nothing to do with campaign contributions from the amateur tennis circuit...but that's a thought for another day).]

In contrast to the CBO plan, Absalon envisions re-papering the entire MBS-eligible US mortgage universe--not just those that cannot refinance now. But, there's another striking feature that contradicts the CBO analysis. Remember part (a) of the deal:

a) Every homeowner with a GSE mortgage can refinance his or her mortgage with anew mortgage at a current fixed rate of 4% or less, with the rate subject to change up or down with the price of Agency pass-through Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS). For borrowers with an FHA or VA mortgage, rates would be higher, but these borrowers should be included in any large-scale refinancing program.

These are not 15 or 30 year fixed rates envisioned by the CBO, but the equivalent of adjustable rate mortgages. Though not as common as fixed-rate in the Danish system, these floating-rate bonds are prevalent and are fixed to CIBOR two or four times annually.

If you think interest rates are going to stay low forever, great. If you think they might be materially higher sometime in the next three decades, then it might not be so wise to trade in your 5.5% 30 year fixed. Regardless, today Bernanke has pledged to keep mortgage rates low long enough to jump start whatever Obama's new mortgage program is, Absalon or not, and to buy the new MBS bonds with the lower coupon.