If they wanted to hang on to it then why Whinestone?? The reason they went down the securitisation route was for capital relief to introduce more leverage into the balance sheet + tap another funding market, nothing to do with evil MBS/ABS trading desks and multi-million pound bonuses you alude to.... how much do you think someone on the treasury team at NRK based in Newcastle got paid??! The fact is they held on to the first loss tranch... so still had a vested interest in the performance of the underlying mortgages.... the US mortgage brokers didn't.
Anyway this is getting very boring and 99% of the folks on this board won't give a s**t or understand all the abbreviations etc you have been spouting.... at the end it is still about too much debt... not who hangs on to what... it is the over levered consumer on the street where the trail to who is responsible stops.... but you can't blame him/her... he is just stupid... (or is that being patronising??)... and of course votes.
