Southern California Savings & Loans Holding On

This is not good for the Jews. The Gentiles are gonna get restless and who will they blame?

The Los Angeles Times reports:

Investors are increasingly throwing in the towel on Southern California-based savings-and-loan mortgage lenders IndyMac Bancorp, FirstFed Financial Corp. and Downey Financial Corp.

Defaults keep climbing on the nontraditional mortgages made by the companies, and bond buyers still shun securities backed by such loans. The companies — which operate IndyMac Bank, First Federal Bank of California and Downey Savings & Loan — have managed to survive long after nonbank sub-prime lenders such as Ameriquest Mortgage Co. of Orange and New Century Financial Corp. of Irvine melted down more than a year ago.

IndyMac shares slid 37 cents to $3.06, a record low. IndyMac’s quarterly report shows its bank unit is at risk of falling from "well capitalized" to merely "adequately capitalized" as defined by its federal regulator, the Office of Thrift Supervision.

After an $88-million contribution from the parent company, IndyMac Bank’s core capital ratio was 5.74% and its risk-based capital ratio was 10.26%, compared with the benchmarks of 5% and 10%, respectively, for well-capitalized thrifts.

During a conference call with analysts, Chief Executive Michael Perry said IndyMac hoped to rebuild its core capital to 7% and risk-based capital to 11% by year-end.

To help it to do so, Perry said, IndyMac might sell its "reverse mortgage" business, Financial Freedom. The thrifts also were major specialists in so-called pay-option adjustable-rate loans, which gave borrowers the option of paying so little that the loan balance rose.

Downey executives couldn’t be reached for comment Monday.

Unlike IndyMac, which sold nearly all its loans, and Downey, which sold some of them, FirstFed kept nearly all its loans on its books, giving it perhaps the best business model for a mortgage lender in the current environment, in which many home loans are hard to sell to investors, Cannon said.

Although critics question whether quirks in accounting rules have allowed FirstFed to exaggerate its strengths, its stated capital ratios are about twice the well capitalized benchmarks — 10.23% for core capital and 19.63% for risk-based capital.

In the first quarter, FirstFed lost $69.8 million, or $5.11 a share, compared with net income of $32.4 million, or $1.92 a share, a year earlier, after setting aside $150.3 million on its books for loan losses.