Originally Posted by
Newman
No no no. You are completely wrong and in fact, have it backwards.
We will use another analogy. It is like you own Sirius XM debt. Back a month or so ago, it was valued at 10-20 cents on the dollar, yet Sirius is still making it's payments. Your earnings show a "value" of 10 cents on the dollar, but Sirius has not defaulted yet and probably never wil. You will make all of your money back and more, yet your "value" of that is 10 cents on the dollar.
These banks are still getting paid on almost EVERY SINGLE PENNY of debt they own, yet they are cutting their book value based on what they could sell it for today.
Pure number terms: You bought your house for 500k dollars. Your loan is for 500k dollars. The house, as of today, is only worth 300k dollars. Did they change the terms of your loan? Of course not. You still owe 500k, but in their earnings, they are writing down 200k in value. There is a 95% chance that you will continue to make every single payment and fully pay off that 500k. But when they report earnings, they announce that they lost 200k on your loan. They have not "lost" a penny, except on paper. Multiply that by 1 million lenders, and all of a sudden you have a 2 billion dollar "loss" for the quarter. Nothing but paper.