Who is Fed buying $40B/mo of MBS from?

Quote from CT10Gov:

They didn't. They bought very high quality stuff. Banks either write off or spun off the crap.

who defines high quality? the rating agencies? don't make me laugh
 
Quote from nutmeg:

"Is that a MBS in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?"

----Ben Bernanke
it aint that funny, this guy is not trading trying to set him and his family up for life, he is really trying to do what they told him at Harvard was the right thing to do.

Cracks me up. Every trader on ET has a better idea.

I doubt seriously that it is going to make much difference one way or the other.

When you start spending more than you are making, there are all kinds of creative ways to fix the problem.

My personal favorite is put it on the credit card and sort it out later.
 
Quote from sma202:

who defines high quality? the rating agencies? don't make me laugh

.... attachment and detachment points in the collateral pool as well as the quality of the pool itself.

It's amusing that ET is both cynical, ignorant, and entirely nihilistic.
 
Quote from CT10Gov:

.... attachment and detachment points in the collateral pool as well as the quality of the pool itself.

It's amusing that ET is both cynical, ignorant, and entirely nihilistic.

That's incorrect, you obviously have no knowledge of the fed collateral process. Don't give a textbook answer when you have never worked in this space. What happens in reality is very different than a book
 
I don't think their balance sheet is loaded up with toxic paper but that still leaves two serious problems: Even if there is not a boatload of truly toxic crap there is no doubt that the credit quality of their assets is a solid bite (maybe two bites) lower than it was five years ago and even 80 years ago during The Great Depression. At the same time the quality of their asset base is lower they have expanded their leverage by a stunning amount.

If you really intend to be the lender of last resort you need a whole bunch of spare capacity in the crunch. I believe the crunch is yet to come and the world is a much more precarious place with a weaker Fed as the final backstop.

Quote from Newmoney24:

if they didn't buy the toxic junk from the big banks like Bank of America, then who did?

I'm pretty sure they did indeed buy the toxic stuff - as well as perhaps some non toxic stuff
 
Quote from sma202:

That's incorrect, you obviously have no knowledge of the fed collateral process. Don't give a textbook answer when you have never worked in this space. What happens in reality is very different than a book

As it turns out, I have indeed worked in this space; I traded credit and mortgage some time back.

"Fed collateral process"? Isn't that the terminology for fed's discount window rather than the asset purchasing programs?

Wait, perhaps you meant the assets that can be pledged are crap rather than the assets bought by the Fed through the QE programs? (in that case, I take back calling you ignorant; we might be talking about different things).
 
I should also point out that all MBS bought by the fed were 'agency' (http://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/ambs/). There's none of that no-doc junk crap in those collateral pools.

Quote from newwurldmn:

what does this mean?

Attachment point is the percent loss that a collateral pool must take before the tranche is hit; detachment point is when the tranche is completely gone.
 
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