photo credit: Bea Ackles

At the beginning of February, there was some dissension among Wall Street professionals regarding the upcoming proposed bank settlement. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association's Asset Management Group had planned to release a statement that "urged government negotiators to protect innocent investors, amid reports that banks will get credit for lowering the balances of mortgages packaged into bonds." But spokesperson Cheryl Crispen explained that SIFMA decided to not issue the statement "because the settlement surrounds potential legal issues involving the commercial interests of many of our members. SIFMA generally does not intervene in such matters and remains focused on matters of policy and advocacy."

The press release would have made it clear that the panel represents the asset-management group's views and would've also said that "bondholders oppose any agreement that makes investors, including pensions and Main Street mutual funds, pay for banks' wrongdoing." Joshua Rosner, research firm Graham Fisher & Co analyst argues that their failure to release said statement "demonstrates, as many of us have been saying for a very long time, that SIFMA is ultimately a sell-side organization that claims to be representative of both. It's why there has been so little done to fix the underlying problems."

Investors are typically pleased by modifications that reduce losses, but they are very concerned that lenders are going to be tempted to doctor calculations in order to "expand the pool of eligible debts and avoid the costs themselves."

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