After Treasury said yesterday it would sell its $142 billion MBS portfolio at a $10b per month pace over the next year, below are key stats on the MBS market overall and also the Treasury program.

Rates are up .125% today after Treasury said it would start selling it’s $142b mortgage bond portfolio this month at a rate of $10b per month. Mortgages were down more than 50 basis points on the initial news, and are now only down 22 bps. Traders are realizing that the Fed’s MBS holdings represent the [...]

Some confusion may end on Friday, when Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner present Congress with three options for reducing the government’s role in home finance. Pundits suggest that the US will have an 8-10 year period to reduce Fannie & Freddie portfolios. Look for a reduction in the maximum loan amount to $625,500, a gradual increase [...]

Future of Fannie & Freddie January is scheduled to be a big month for Freddie and Fannie, in that the Treasury is expected to release plans for their future. Merrill Lynch released some conjecture about upcoming news, which will probably come out after the State of the Union address on 1/25. Merrill reminds us that [...]

Monthly Payments on U.S. Debt Since early October, the 10-year US Treasury yield has gone up about 85 basis points (from 2.4% to 3.35%). The crisis in Europe and the Fed’s $600 billion bond-buying program (QE2) in theory would move rates lower. But a pick-up in world economic indicators, along with concern over a growing [...]

Elizabeth Warren on Consumer Protection For some reason the mortgage industry already doesn’t seem to like presidential and Treasury advisor Elizabeth Warren, who’s also tasked with setting up the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or Agency). Here’s the Treasury’s ’5 Questions’ interview with Warren, which is posted on ‘Treasury Notes’ the blog that Treasury announced [...]

The US Treasury will be selling its remaining shares in Citigroup, not only exiting ownership but making a profit on its investment. It found buyers for 2.4 billion shares at $4.35 a share for $10.5 billion of profit. (Can they please manage my stocks?) At this point the biggest private stakes left on the Treasury’s [...]

Jobless Claims Up This morning’s weekly Jobless Claims showed an increase to 457,000, slightly higher than expected, and the 4-week moving average is up 2k to 456k. Non-farm productivity came in at +1.9%. Unit Labor Costs were -.1% after adjusting for productivity. After this news and the Fed announcement yesterday (see below), stocks and mortgage [...]

FHA Mortgage Insurance Increasing October 4 FHA mortgage insurance will be increasing as of October 4, 2010 because the FHA insurance pool only has $3.5 billion in cash and Treasury securities left in its “capital reserve account” The money sitting in the CRA represents a 71% decline in just the last three months. The Mutual [...]

Rate Snapshot Conforming, Jumbo, and FHA rates ended last week at record lows again (see rates below), which makes a two-month streak of record lows. A significant rate spike is not expected in the near future, but it’s also not likely rates will stay this low. Here’s why rates could tick up next week.