Who Is Really Paying The $25 Billion TBTF Mortgage Settlement

The surprising tale that I will attempt to pen in this blog entry has a very familiar cast of characters; the Obama Administration, the Housing Bubble, "Toxic Mortgages", and Too Big To Fail "TBTF" Banks among others. While the headline of TBTF banks in a $25bil mortgage settlement is known to many, the underlying details of the settlement are less known and quite appalling when you pull back the covers.

The wounds on past and present homeowners are still fresh from the housing crisis. As Jonathan Laing points out in this weekend's Barron's cover story, "five million of the country's 76million mortgage holders have lost their homes to foreclosure or lender ordered short sales since 2006, and an estimated 14million more own more on their homes than their properties are currently worth. In all, some $7.4 trillion in homeowners' equity has been destroyed according to Mark Zandi..."

Cries for Accountability
While blame deserves to be cast upon numerous parties for the housing bubble, Americans have rightly called for accountability on the TBTF banks. Accountability for what? Among other faults, robo-signing became prevalent among TBTF banks as they forged mortgage documents in order to ensure proper paperwork was done to foreclose on properties.

Details of the $25bil Settlement (in the words of HUD) & Public Lauding
"On February 9, the Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, other federal agencies, and 49 state attorneys general announced the largest federal and state settlement agreement in history with the five major mortgage servicers for their mortgage servicing practices. The agreement has the potential to help nearly two million American homeowners through a variety of means, including loss mitigation tools such as principal reduction and refinancing of loans for borrowers who owe more on their house than it is worth (“underwater” homeowners), payments of billions of dollars to federal and state parties, and payments directly to individuals who lost their homes to foreclosure and meet certain other criteria." The public seemed to buy right into this news. After all, $25bil being paid by the bank sounds pretty tough right? Upon news of the $25bil Mortgage settlement many media members gushed over President Obama's "accountability" of these banks [16]. President Obama said himself that it was about “standing up for the American people” and “holding those who broke the law accountable.”

What's the Truth?
Only $5bil of the $25bil is actual cash being paid out by the banks. The banks earn "credits" for the remaining $20bil by modifying either loans that they own on their own books or securitized private label MBS that they service. Which will they choose to modify? Alison Frankel described the incentives last week in this article, [17]"Banks receive a $1 credit for every dollar of principal they reduce in a loan they own outright. They earn a 45 cent credit for every dollar written down on a securitized loan. That incentive, in combination with the strictures of the pooling and servicing agreements with investors, was intended to limit the number of securitized mortgages the banks would modify." The major question you should be asking yourself, and the overall premise of this article, is why are non-agency mortgage investors who did no harm being asked to foot the bill for the sins of the TBTF robo-signers? If you were a bank holding a loan at par, would you rather modify a given loan and take a dollar for dollar capital hit to get a credit towards the $20bil bogey, or modify twice as much of a MBS holders loan that you service (taking no capital hit yourself) and get the same credit? As former SIGTARP Neil Barofsky tells Bloomberg, "this would be comical if it wasn't so tragic [18]".

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