[quote=jpinpb]From my perspective, it is easy to pay back money if you’re not reporting a loss on your books. The accounting rules are assisting their “profits” and the banks are just kicking the can for whatever reason, intentional or not, and not foreclosing, therefore no losses occurring. [/quote]
Tell me something… did the “accounting rules” raise the $161 billion in new equity capital that has been injected into these banks over the last nine months? Or did that capital come from investors? That’s a rhetorical question.
We can debate the extent of “extend and pretend” (E&P)(of which there is a fair amount even outside of SFRs) and I can point out – again – that most of the SFR E&P occurs within MBS (and not with mortgages sitting on bank balance sheets), but the $161 billion in new equity capital is not debatable – it’s real.
