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Journal Article
Volatile mortgage rates - a new fact of life?
Mortgage interest rates now move much more closely with capital market rates than in the past. This important development stems in part from the removal of mortgage usury ceilings. But the main reason for the closer relationship of mortgage rates to capital market rates is growth of the secondary mortgage market.
Journal Article
Strategies for selling smaller pools of loans
Proceedings of the Conference on the Secondary Market for Community Development Loans <p> In September 2006, the Federal Reserve hosted a conference on secondary markets for community development loans. A theme that emerged was that techniques, programs, and structures that work for large loans do not necessarily work for small ones. In this article, I briefly outline why smaller deals can be more difficult to finance, and describe two ways in which the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC) has used unrated transactions to overcome these obstacles. Finally, I suggest that a broad secondary ...
Conference Paper
Commentary: improving secondary markets in rural America
Working Paper
GSEs, mortgage rates, and secondary market activities
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) that purchase mortgages and issue mortgage-backed securities (MBS). In addition, the GSEs are active participants in the primary and secondary mortgage markets on behalf of their own portfolios of MBS. Because these portfolios have grown quite large, portfolio purchases as well as MBS issuance are likely to be important forces in the mortgage market. This paper examines the statistical evidence of a connection between GSE actions and the interest rates paid by mortgage borrowers. We find that both portfolio purchases and ...
Working Paper
Long-Term Finance and Investment with Frictional Asset Markets
Trading frictions in financial markets affect more long- than short-term bonds generating an upward sloping yield curve. Long-term financing is more expensive in economies with higher trading frictions so firms choose to borrow and invest in shorter horizons and lower productivity projects. The theory guides a new identification of the slope of liquidity spread in the data. We measure and calibrate the model for the US, and counterfactual exercises suggest that variations in trading frictions can have significant effects on maturity choices and investment. A policy intervention improves ...
Journal Article
The introduction of the TMPG fails charge for U.S. Treasury securities
The TMPG fails charge for U.S. Treasury securities provides that a buyer of Treasury securities can claim monetary compensation from the seller if the seller fails to deliver the securities on a timely basis. The charge was introduced in May 2009 and replaced an existing market convention of simply postponing?without any explicit penalty and at an unchanged invoice price?a seller?s obligation to deliver Treasury securities if the seller fails to deliver the securities on a scheduled settlement date. This article explains how a proliferation of settlement fails following the insolvency of ...
Journal Article
Buy, sell, or hold? Valuing cash flows from mortgage lending
Journal Article
Turning uncertainty into risk: why data are the key to greater investment
Proceedings of the Conference on the Secondary Market for Community Development Loans. <p> The role of data dominated much of the discussion at the Federal Reserve?s Secondary Market for Community Development Loans Conference. In our discussions of how to attract new investors to the field, the group reviewed all the things that investors are looking for: volume, geographic diversity, homogeneous assets, etc. But what became clear was that, above all, investors need data. Any investment is possible only if the investor has the necessary information?the data?to decide whether to make an ...
Journal Article
Developments in the secondary mortgage market