Wash, rinse, repeat. The American public never gets tired of the destructive abuse it suffers from Wall St. The deep sub-prime mortgage market is roaring back and, with it, the nuclear bomb-laden derivatives that triggered round one of The Big Short de facto financial system collapse:
It’s an astonishing comeback for the roughly $70 billion market for synthetic CDOs, which rose to infamy during the crisis and then faded into obscurity after nearly destroying the financial system. But perhaps the most surprising twist is Citigroup itself. Less than a decade ago, the bank was forced into a taxpayer bailout after suffering huge losses on similar types of securities tied to mortgages.
Citigroup is leading the charge this time around, instead of Bear Stearns and Lehman: Citi Revives The Trade That Blew Up The System In 2008. Oh, and do not be mistaken, the financial “safeguards” legislated by Congress and widely heralded by Obama and Elizabeth Warren are completely useless.
The commentary below is a guest post from a reader and Short Seller’s Journal subscriber who is a 25-year subprime lending professional. Below, he shares his wisdom of experience in explaining why the latest deep subprime mortgage products hitting the market is the definitive “bell” that rings when a market bubble is about to pop.
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Before the Lehman crash I was part of the brokering and banking system that built billion dollar pools of commercial cow manure loans we farmed out to Lehman Bros. JPM, CIT, Zion’s Bank, Bank of the West and others did the same.
Lehman was the poster child. They stretched the envelope of mortgage insanity. Their failure was the instant death knell of that terrible scam. Every originator of these pools and brokering conduits failed. Some disappeared in 24 hours. But like the undead, these NINJA warriors are back from the grave just in time to profit from the biggest housing bubble in human history.
While “The Big Short” bubble/bust wiped out the industry, the overseers walked away collectively with billions and no one went to jail other than a few scape-goated underlings. But like the survivors of a 7 year mortgage apocalypse cycle of feast or famine, those who made it are back are more corrupt than ever.
No one learns from these mistakes. Bankers and brokers are like “Chucky” in the “Child’s Play” horror movies. It wasn’t more than a few days after Lehman imploded that the entire fraudulent subprime commercial and residential loan edifice came down. The commercial bank loan system shut down for nearly a year. Banks failed by the hundreds. Thousands more were propped up with TARP and HARP.
What got me going is that the latest product being pimped by Citadel Capital reminds me of a classic bucket shop operation with all the worst elements of gangster loan sharks, knee breakers and “vig” of 5% a week. Perhaps one of the most insidious aspects of the subprime business being originated by Citadel is the manner in which they get around the legislation implemented under Obama via Dodd-Frank that was supposed to protect the public from predatory lending and Wall Street fraud. Citadel specifically has a lending program that is called “Outside Dodd Frank.”
Citadel really caught my eye. There’s a wealth of information on Citadel Servicing Corporation, some from their web page and some from the ‘net itself. While the mainstream media heralds the merits of the Dodd Frank legislation, there are large loopholes in the mortgage broker/banker regulations that circumvent the alleged “safeguards.”
This mortgage origination program, which is disguised as a “business loan program” was sent to me by Citadel Capital, a relatively new and rapidly growing residential and commercial lender. Citadel Capital is part of the Citadel LLC hedge fund empire.
As a commercial loan broker for the last 25 years, I can tell by the rates being charged for these loans that the “professionals” at Citadel hold their nose while they package the junk paper and send them as “mortgage pools” to Wall Street. The Citadel junk is much like the old sub prime NINJA crap that filled portfolios from coast to coast.
Citadel doesn’t want these loans to ripen and turn sour, defaulting while they still sit on Citadel’s balance sheet waiting to be shipped to Wall Street’s financial sausage factory. It’s likely they sit on Citadel’s shelf for no more than a month or so and, like smuggled heroin, peddled to the next middle man in the chain for cutting, diluting and selling to the end user.
Most companies like Citadel borrow on wholesale lines capital provided by yield-starved pension funds. These funds are on the hook for as long as it takes Citadel to churn them like rancid butter, as they aggregate a loan pool big enough to interest Wall Street into securitizing the pooled loans into the infamous CDO’s (collateralized debt obligations). These are the financial nuclear weapons that blew up Wall Street in 2008.
The big fish,TBTF banks bailed out by Obama and Bernanke, take the loan pools and repackage them into risk-return-tiered mortgage-backed trusts. They then piece out the tranches to their clients – yield-starved institutional investors and greedy high net worth sitting ducks. Some of the tranches of these financial sausages are given ratings from Moody’s and S&P which are significantly higher than they merit in return for a small part of the “vig” involved. You are naive if you thought the post-2008 financial “reform” eliminated this important step in the entire process.
The money involved is enormous. The wholesalers – entities like banks and investment funds who provide “warehouse” lines of credit used to fund the loans – get a 3-4% spread as their fee on funds loaned. When funded, these loans are priced to give the aggregator such as Citadel premiums of 5-9% or more, depending on the various ingredients stirred in to “juice” the yield. These premiums are apportioned to the various parties involved in funding the mortgages and bringing borrowers to the table. The mortgage brokers offer up their clients like lambs to the slaughter, concerned with one thing, collecting the points paid by the borrower plus handsome rebates from Citadel where allowed by state or federal statute.
There’s even bigger “vig” for bringing the borrowers to the party. Citadel brokers and outside mortgage brokers can make up to 8-9% on the amount borrowed depending on both the risk-profile of the borrower and the willingness of the borrower to accept various “bells and whistles” which ultimately increase the cost of the loan. But these hidden fees are not paid up-front by the borrower. Instead, they’re built into the high rate charged to the borrower. The Citadel “group” gets paid when the loan is part of a pool that is marked up in value and sold to Wall Street as material for its financial sausage.
Speaking of those “bells and whistles,” which substantially increase the cost of the mortgage to the borrower, and having seen how these loans were crafted in the past, I know that any one of these “innocuous” terms written into the fine print can increase the cost to the borrower by 1 percent or more. To make matters worse, these are the terms that make it nearly impossible for the borrower to make payments for more than a short period of time.
The borrowers stagger into loan offices like Dead Men Zombies with 500 FICOs and nary a pulse. Many are remnants of the last sub prime crash, walking wounded waiting to be fleeced again. They provide some bank statements, often photo-shopped by the borrower or the broker. They offer up hand-me-down, shop worn camp fire stories of woe that get better with each telling. The greed-driven broker feigns a look of sorrow and understanding. If I’ve heard 1 story I’ve heard 100.
Even if they’ve defaulted on the last 3 loans, filed Chapter 11 or 22 and stiffed every creditor in town, somehow they’ll convince the underwriter they’ve had their St Francis of Assisi debt moment and will never be late again. Listen up. There’s a reason they have a 500 FICO. They’re deadbeats with a real estate deal to lend on. They’ll willingly agree to the high-priced terms in order to get back in the game of buying and flipping.
The end investor buys this tranche and yet still might carve it up like a hog, selling some slices here and there; repriced and re-rated by the rating agencies to cover the stink. They might keep the best parts for themselves while dumping the low cuts and offal to a new tier of overseas zombie, yield-starved investors.
The science behind these mortgage conveyor belts was perfected 35 years ago. The bankers pulling the levers will never be prosecuted; just fines; pittance by the DOJ. The brokers will never look back. They’re unlikely to be prosecuted except for the rare ones; those who get caught because they stayed in the game too long or didn’t cover their tracks.
IRD’s note: Citadel is not the only purveyor of these financial time-bombs. There’s several “bucket shop” deep sub-prime mortgage generators springing to life across the country. As an example, there’s a company called SCL Mortgage (“SCL” stands for “Special Circumstances Lending”) based out of Castle Rock, Colorado. Castle Rock is a “poster child” city for the previous and current housing bubble. The Company was founded and is led by a one of the deep subprime “NINJA warriors” of the previous “Big Short” era, as are several of his employees.