> As a result, they purchased a large amount (over $80bn!) in mortgage backed securities (MBS)
Do we now have people making decisions on stuff like this who are too young or clueless to remember what happened with the 2004-2007 mortgage backed security bubble that popped in the 2008-2009 financial crisis? Seriously? Did nobody learn the lessons on this? Countrywide and other originators of MBS and CDOs?
Any investments whose value was sensitive to the Fed's rates would have had the exact same problem.
In 2008 MBSes were bad because the underlying value of the investment turned out to be bad. That's not happening this time. All that's happening is the same thing that happens to any bonds -- when rates increase, older lower-rate bonds lose value because why would anyone pay full price for them when they can get a new one with a higher rate?
> Do you think MBS are always and forever a bad investment because of a bubble 15 years ago?
I think heavy exposure to a single type of long-term asset for a retail bank is always going to be a bad investment decisions, because risks materialize, and correlated risks tend to materialize together, and when a retail bank suddenly lacks liquidity...
The underlying problem in the 08 collapse was poor/non-existent underwriting of the mortgages and those loans being rated AAA when packaged in an MBS. When the economy slowed just a bit people started defaulting because originators were writing NINJ (No Income, No Job) loans, something that is illegal today.
This situation today has nothing to do with the failure of the MBS'S to payout like 08.
The error wasn’t that the mortgages defaulted too much (like in the ‘08 crisis) but that interest rates went up, which is a distinct problem, and, from the comments in these discussions, not something that the capital requirements adequately capture.
Do we now have people making decisions on stuff like this who are too young or clueless to remember what happened with the 2004-2007 mortgage backed security bubble that popped in the 2008-2009 financial crisis? Seriously? Did nobody learn the lessons on this? Countrywide and other originators of MBS and CDOs?