by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
In good Financial Crisis manner, stuff blows up despite the Fed’s effort to stem the chaos. Now hoping for taxpayer bailouts.
Mortgage REIT # 4 so far: This afternoon, March 24, MFA Financial announced that it had received “an unusually high number of margin calls from financing counterparties,” and that by the close of business on Monday, it couldn’t meet those margin calls.
Its shares (MFA) had started out the day in the positive at just under $3 and then plunged 87% during the day, to $0.36. On February 20, before the market chaos started, shares were still over $8 a share. MFA Financial blamed the repo-market where it “had experienced higher funding costs,” and the mortgage market turmoil triggered by COVID-19.