Word: toxicities
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...moment, there are few buyers for the toxic assets that are poisoning Citigroup, Bank of America and other major financial players. The unsellable loans sit on the banks' balance sheets at a huge loss, priced from zero to an optimistic 60% of what they might have sold for before the crash...
...time of pessimistic forecasts and rising fear, many toxic assets are probably worth more than the bank models or credit-default-swap indexes suggest. For example, a recent reading of the ABX index puts the value of even the highest-rated subprime mortgage bonds created in 2007 at only 27% of their precrunch prices. Yes, Americans are behind on their mortgages, but even the most pessimistic prognostications do not predict that 73% of home loans will become worthless. (See pictures of the dangers of printing money...
...growing number of regulators seem to think some relaxation of the rules may make sense. The top U.S. banking supervisor, Comptroller of the Currency John Dugan, tells TIME he is in favor of letting the banks mark back up the value of some of their toxic assets. "I think there are some changes that ought to be made," Dugan says. Mark-to-market accounting is a problem, he says, for illiquid assets because "those things have just stopped trading altogether." Dugan does not support doing away with mark-to-market entirely; not even industry lobbyists want that. But his deputy...
...save the banks, government officials might see a change to mark-to-market rules as the most promising way remaining to bolster the banks and their bottom lines. What's more, relaxing the accounting requirement might make it easier for Treasury to iron out a plan to remove toxic assets from bank balance sheets...
...banks are allowed to market the toxic assets back up to their original precrunch prices or close to them, that would give the Obama Administration political cover: Treasury can come in and underbid the value of the toxic assets, declaring before Congress and the taxpayers that it is driving a hard bargain with the banks...