Loans Expert

Athens hopes to begin talks with European and International Monetary Fund officials on Wednesday on a policy programme that investors are increasingly convinced will lead the debt-ridden country to tap what would be the biggest bailout ever attempted.

Soros said the spike in Greek bond spreads – the premium investors pay to buy Greek debt instead of equivalent German bonds which hit a euro lifetime high on Monday – was caused in part by market speculation.

Ford Motor Credit is expected to sell $1.09 billion of asset-backed securities supported by auto loans early this week, said market sources on Monday.

JP Morgan Securities, Morgan Stanley and RBS are underwriters for the multi-part offering whose largest tranches include $285 million of A1-plus 0.31-year short-term notes, $203.8 million of AAA-rated one-year notes, $382 million of AAA-rated two-year notes and $144.6 million of AAA-rated three-year notes, market sources said.

The deal’s smaller tranches include a $32.05 million AA-rated 4.12-year notes, $21.4 million of A-rated 4.41-year notes and $21.4 million of BaBB-rated 4.21-year notes, market sources said. Price guidance for the upcoming deal were not immediately available.

The federal government’s loan modification program, designed by the Obama administration to forestall the skyrocketing number of home foreclosures in the United States, is not effective enough, a report said this week.

The Congressional Oversight Panel, in a 216-page report, said that the Treasury Department is struggling to get the program running and come to the aid of the majority of homeowners in trouble. As a result, the foreclosure crisis has continued unabated, the panel said.

The panel monitors the government’s activities surrounding its financial bailouts and other programs that aim to address the financial crisis.

U.S. mortgage rates fell this week after a month of increases coinciding with the Federal Reserve ending its purchases of home loan debt.

Rates for 30-year fixed loans dropped to 5.07 percent for the week ended today from 5.21 percent, mortgage finance company Freddie Mac said in a statement. The rate touched an eight-month high last week after the central bank on March 31 ended a program to buy $1.25 trillion of mortgage-backed securities.

“There was a little bit of a hiccup,” said Donald Rissmiller, chief economist at Strategas Research Partners in New York. “When the dust is settled, the Fed has been able to back away from the market without too many problems.”

Shortly after President Obama pushed his health care reform through Congress, Idaho became the first state in a growing coalition rallying against the bill as an unconstitutional act of the Federal Legislature. At the same time, the state’s budget cuts to higher education are forcing college students to pay higher and higher tuition rates. How are these distinctly divergent concepts linked?

The answer is simple. The bill not only changed the face of health care in America — it also revamped the student loan system. “What’s gotten overlooked amid all the hoopla, all the drama of last week, is what’s happened with education,” Obama said in a speech at Northern Virginia Community College, reported by the New York Times.

As Congress dives into one of its first big post-spring recess issues — financial reform — Sen. Carl Levin kicked off the final leg of the largest investigation on Capitol Hill into what caused the near collapse of the nation’s financial system.

Levin, D-Detroit, on Tuesday launched hearings by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that focused on high-risk mortgages given by banks to homeowners who either weren’t aware of loan terms that resulted in skyrocketing payments or couldn’t initially afford the terms. Levin chairs the committee.

The nation’s leading consumer banks gave a grim assessment of the mortgage industry today in testimony on Capitol Hill. Chief among them was Bank of America’s head of home loans who said a “considerable number of customers” will lose their homes in the next two years.

Hundreds of thousands of Bank of America customers haven’t made a mortgage payment in more than a year. And more than a million others are at least two months behind in their payments.

Only a small fraction of Bank of America customers have had their mortgages modified to make payments more affordable.

Small Business Administration loans to businesses in New Hampshire increased by 91 percent in the first two quarters of fiscal year 2010, the agency reported.

According to the SBA, in the first six months of the fiscal year, 387 SBA loans totaling more than $69.8 million were approved, compared with 203 loans totaling $27.6 million in the first six months of fiscal year 2009.

“The data demonstrates that our SBA lenders throughout the state are actively looking for opportunities to lend to qualified small business owners,” said Witmer Jones, the SBA’s district director.

Bank of America has begun a plan to help homeowners who owe more than their homes are worth.

Many Americans are assigned loans with interest rates that have adjusted up. Now they find themselves underwater with payments they cannot afford. BofA, like other banks, don’t want to take back these homes.

Bank of America acquired many of these loans with their purchase of Countrywide. The loan modification programs over the past few years have not performed as expected, but that may change.

There are incentives for banks to work with their customers. Bank of America is working with homeowners in conjunction with President Obama’s loan modification program.

Demand for home loans continued to wane in February, even before the two latest interest rate increases, data released on Monday shows.

Just 50,287 mortgages were granted to owner-occupiers in February, down by a seasonally-adjusted 1.8 per cent compared to January, the fifth consecutive month of decline, Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows.

Economists’ forecasts had centred on 1.0 per cent fall in February home loan commitments.

Last year’s three interest rate rises and an end to the federal government’s more generous first homebuyer grant at the end of 2009 were blamed for the steady drop-off in mortgage demand.