US announces probe into S&P August 18, 2011 THE US department of justice is investigating the ratings that Standard & Poor’s gave to dozens of mortgages in the run up to the financial crisis, amid concerns pressure was put on analysts to hike the ratings. Though the investigation is said to have been underway since before the rating agency downgraded US debt from [...]
Mortgage lending slows in UK August 18, 2011 The rate of UK house-buying is set to fall again in the next few months, experts warned yesterday, after new data showed the faltering recovery in UK mortgages ground to a halt in July. Bob Pannell, chief economist of the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML), said Britain had been hit by the effects of the [...]
Mortgage lending subdued August 18, 2011 Mortgage lending shows no sign of picking up, according to the latest figures from the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML). Gross new lending, for both house buyers and those remortgaging, fell by one per cent in July to £12.6bn. That was also six per cent down from the figure for July last year. The CML [...]
Inflation to stay above 4pc August 15, 2011 INFLATION in the UK could have slowed further in July, yet is expected to spike again in late summer and during autumn. July’s consumer price index (CPI) and retail price index (RPI) figures are set for publication this morning, with some analysts forecasting a fall to 4.1 per cent in the CPI, and for the [...]
S&P lowers more ratings August 8, 2011 A SWATHE of US institutions were stripped of their gold-plated credit ratings by Standard & Poor’s as the fall-out from the downgrade of the US rating agency continued yesterday. As Moody’s weighed its decision to hold the US at AAA, S&P cut the two giant US mortgage agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to AA+ [...]
S&P downgrades raft of US finance bodies August 8, 2011 Standard & Poor’s has made further rating cuts to the US’s biggest financial institutions following its historic downgrade of the US last Friday. Standard & Poor’s has downgraded both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two US government-backed mortgage agencies, to bring them in line with the sovereign rating. The agency had put the two [...]
AIG sues BofA for $10bn over “massive fraud” August 8, 2011 The insurer American International Group Inc is suing Bank of America Corp to recover more than $10bn (£6.1bn) of losses from a “massive fraud” on mortgage debt, deepening the morass of litigation faced by the largest US bank. AIG, still largely owned by taxpayers after $182.3bn of government bailouts, is the latest of a growing [...]
S&P eyes new downgrade as US fights back August 7, 2011 US MORTGAGE agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are likely to have their credit ratings cut by Standard & Poor’s today after its downgrade of the US sovereign debt rating last week. S&P is likely to lower the two government-backed housing agencies to AA+ from triple A due to their dependence on the US government [...]
Credit rating agencies caught in political web August 7, 2011 NEXT Tuesday marks the three-year anniversary of Moody’s downgrading nearly 700 mortgage-backed bonds. As the subprime crisis ploughed on, the move followed thousands of other screeching U-turns on mortgage-backed assets by the three main credit rating agencies – S&P, Fitch and Moody’s. The trio’s cash cow had come back to bite, with a wave of [...]
Farewell to risk-free rates as delays hit US credibility August 1, 2011 WHETHER or not the deal being worked on intensively in Washington over the past few hours avoids a US downgrade, there is one matter on which all observers agree: the whole debt wrangling saga has dealt a lasting blow to America’s financial credibility. Credit ratings agencies might yet be persuaded to hold off on a [...]