"The More Things Change' - A Guest Blog

For many years while managing the mortgage backed bond trading desk for Goldman Sachs I had the pleasure of working with today's guest blogger - Frank Pallotta. Frank covered some of the countries largest mortgage bankers as well as Fannie Mae. Few people know more about the mortgage origination business than Frank. Frank has recently founded his own firm, Steel Curtain Capital Group, which advises clients on the sales and purchases of distressed assets. Thanks to Frank for his insightful commentary on the crisis in the credit markets.

"Few things in life are as certain as death and taxes; except maybe the occasional catastrophic dislocation in the financial markets. But one thing is certain - financial markets are cyclical. What goes up will eventually come down. And as recent events have shown, if they go up too far or too fast, they will come down faster and harder than you can possibly imagine. Since the early eighties, we’ve heard about turmoil in the capital markets with names like: The S&L scandal, the RTC crisis, the stock market crash (both of them), the “dot.com bubble”, the real estate crisis, Enron, the Russian Debt Crisis, LTCB, “Orange County” and the list goes on (and on). Most, of these “dislocations” were a direct result of, or exacerbated by Wall Street’s desire to trade through, around, or in front of these anomalies.

The latest crisis to reach the top of the charts (as the equivalent of rock and roll’s “Stairway to Heaven”), is what’s come to be known as “The Subprime Crisis”. The reality is that labeling this a subprime issue is about as absurd as calling baseball’s steroid scandal the “Barry Bonds scandal”. Don’t confuse the symptom, for the disease. This crisis goes way beyond subprime. For starters, the finger of blame can point to the borrower who took out a mortgage he knew he could not afford, to the mortgage company who looked the other way during the application process, to the Investment Bank who packaged this “stuff” to the rating agency who provided a stop-loss level of 4% to AAA, to the CMO buyer who said “55 to swaps sounds cheap”.

The good and the bad news is that no one is doing anything stupid – for now. It’s probably a good thing that virtually all non-standard mortgage origination has come to a halt while the markets attempt to readjust. The reality however, is that this asset class (residential housing) will not go away. The economy will eventually stagger to its feet, and blood will start to flow again through the Global Residential cadaver again. Another certainty is that Subprime and Alt-A loans will return to their rightful place in the financial system. Subprime and Alt-A loans existed long before this current crisis began. Subprime loans will return again, and will carry a rate commensurate with the borrower’s ability to repay that loan. Alt-A borrowers will again come to understand that “Alternative A” truly means alternative documentation, and not an alternative “borrower”. And that both of these loan types will return to their past risk/reward profile. Lower documentation and credit scores must be offset by more equity. Less equity will be offset with substantial, verified reserves, and any mortgage application with the word “stated” in it will be relegated to bird cage liner, kindling and toilet paper. Investors will also have to do a bit more homework (on their own this time) and not rely solely on Wall Street stress analysis, legal opinions and rating agency models.

The bursting of the “Technology Bubble” didn’t destroy the technology sector. As such, the “US Housing Bubble” will not destroy the US housing market ebay, Google, and Yahoo proved that technology wasn’t dead, just the irrational exuberance surrounding that sector. The Global residential markets will go through the same transformation. Most loans types (NINA, and SIVA, POA), and their originators will go the way of World.com, theGlobe.com, and Pets.com. While others will emerge as sound safe and sane."