Moody’s Joins the S&P in Lowering the Ratings of Sub-prime Mortgages

An article in the WSJ discusses the recent moves of Moody’s and the S&P to lower the ratings on hundreds of bonds. The article is worth a read. It provides a good summary of events up to today.

The widening meltdown in the subprime-mortgage market caught up with the nation's two big debt-rating companies yesterday, with Standard & Poor's and Moody's announcing plans to downgrade hundreds of bonds backed by the risky home loans.

In an acknowledgment that it severely misjudged the risk of bonds tied to subprime mortgages, Standard & Poor's Ratings Service said it is looking to slash credit ratings on as many as 612 such bonds, with a value of $12 billion, because of mounting delinquencies on the underlying mortgages. Subprime mortgages are made to borrowers with shaky credit profiles.

Hours after S&P's move, Moody's Investors Service said it was downgrading 399 mortgage-backed securities issued in 2006 and reviewing an additional 32 for downgrade, affecting $5.2 billion of bonds. It also downgraded 52 bonds issued in 2005.

"The level of losses continues to exceed historical precedents and our expectations," said Susan Barnes, an S&P managing director, in a conference call with investors to discuss the looming downgrades.

Subprime loans have played an increasingly important role in the mortgage market, accounting for 20% of all mortgages originated in 2006, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. In all, $2.3 trillion of subprime loans were taken out by borrowers between 2002 and 2006, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. Key to their growth was the ability of lenders to spread the risks by packaging the loans into securities and selling them to a large number of investors from pension funds to hedge funds, who used the S&P and Moody's ratings to help gauge the quality of the bonds.