Thursday, April 3, 2008

Bank of England: Buy the "junk."

The Bank of England's financial markets chief has issued a clarion call for banks and investors to buy up the troubled asset-backed securities at the heart of the financial crisis.

It is a "serious puzzle" that no one is buying this "supposedly undervalued" paper, Paul Tucker said, adding that unless these frozen markets restarted soon, the credit crisis would reach a new intensity...

Just as remarkable, however, was his statement about parts of the mortgage-backed securities market, which has ground to a standstill amid fears that the instruments could be tainted by sub-prime defaults.

He said: "Financial markets have swung from a prolonged period of underpricing risk to now plausibly overpricing risk on at least some products.

"The serious puzzle... is why there is a dearth of buyers for the supposedly undervalued paper."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2008/04/03/cnbank103.xml

No comments: