Pursuits
Treasury to Push for Clarity in Mortgage-Bond Ratings
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The U.S. Treasury is seeking to stoke issuance in the mortgage-bond market by pushing credit-rating firms to offer more information on how they might grade securities tied to riskier loans.
Lenders won’t make a wider range of mortgages to package into bonds without government backing unless they know how much of the debt would receive AAA rankings, Michael Stegman, counselor to the Treasury secretary for housing finance, said today in a speech at a Washington conference. At the same time, credit graders don’t offer that information until seeing data on the actual loans, he said.