Originally Posted by
Loc
AJ,
Sorry to hear about the troubles with selling the coach. You have to love the credit markets. It is amazing what happens when artificial demand disappears. The structured market (CDO's, CLO's, ABS, etc.) was a financial alchemist's gold mine. Every lender was able to make a loan without having to worry about risk because before the ink was dry the loan was sold into some securitized product and the lender made a nice fee. There was every incentive to make loans to generate fees and underwriting suffered (at best). The rating agencies aided in the game by rating these instruments as high quality and investors scrambled to purchase them because of high ratings and relatively high returns. Now that the structured market is a fading memory, lenders are having to think about underwriting again and they do not have any appetite for risk. Unfortunately, I think this one will last for a while.