VIDEO: Write-downs understated by $35 billion or more – Regulatory filings show banks and securities firms have not declared at least $35 billion of further write-downs that they have included in their balance sheets. – Bloomberg

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Mortage REIT Insider: Alescoe’s CDO Woe -  Perhaps the biggest story of the week was CDO woes anew at Alesco Financial. This week’s blowup came courtesy of ailing Alt-A lender IndyMac Bancorp… – Patrick Harden -   housingwire 

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FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair at the Brookings Institution Forum, The Great Credit Squeeze: How it Happened, How to Prevent Another; Washington, DC – FDIC 
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NAR reveals national property database details – ‘Library/Archive’ is latest name for ‘Gateway’ plan – Inman News
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Trading spaces: CME era ends – LAST DAY -  Traders bid farewell to Merc floor, host of friendships, rivalries, profits -  Chicago Sun-Times

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Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland Econpubs – includes the article: What Interest Rate Spreads Can Tell Us about Mortgage Markets Regional Activity – FRB Cleveland

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What a Deal: Trash for Treasuries – To grease the gears of the nation’s seized-up credit markets, the New York Fed in recent months created three new lending entities. Together, they allow banks and financial firms to swap up to $350 billion of securities they cannot sell for cash or United States Treasuries.  … CNBC 

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Government needs mechanism to shutter insolvent i-banks, says FDIC’s Bair -  Chairwoman says method is needed to close a bank down in an orderly way – FinancialWeek 

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NYT Still Does Not Understand the Housing Crash – Dean Baker – cepr.net

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What Do Q1 Bank Loan Defaults Say About 2008 and Beyond? – Institutional Risk Analyst

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Piggyback in a Poke (Subprime Edition) – … Norris nominates a Merrill Lynch offering as candidate for the worst ever mortgage security. … – Research Recap

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Market correction ongoing, significant: ECB’s Trichet – … end of the credit crunch was not yet in sight and the world was experiencing an “ongoing and very significant market correction”. … “I think that we are getting closer to the end of the financial crisis,” Ackermann told the Swiss Sunday newspaper Sonntagsblick. “It is not fully over yet, but the signs from the United States are encouraging.” – Reuters 

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For Wall Street Workers, Ax Falls Quietly – LOUISE STORY and ERIC DASH – Some people who have lost jobs, and many more struggling to hold them, say banks are keeping employees in the dark about the size and timing of layoffs.  People on Wall Street seem to be vanishing overnight.  …  this round seems different: it is eerily quiet.  So quiet, in fact, that people refer to these cuts as stealth layoffs. – NY Times
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HUD Issues Guidance on HECM Advisor Program – Reverse Mortgage Daily 

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IRA ARTMAN SECTION – thanks Ira:
1.  Wood products and Economic Projections – 1Q Macro Review – Bruce P. Glass, PhD – The Campbell Group

2.  WE GOTTA GET OUTTA THIS PLACE – A California financier argues that the short-term pain of higher rates will yield long-term growth and stability. – Christoipher Grey – The Slatin Report

posted by Bill Coppedge