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mortgage-backed security

mortgage-backed security

11 7.2
An investment made from many home loans that pays interest and loan repayments to investors sometimes backed by the government
  • noun
  • /ˈmɔːrɡɪdʒ bækˈt sɪˈkjʊrɪti/
  • Specialized
translation icon : título respaldado por hipotecas
  • Investors are interested in mortgage-backed securities because they provide a steady stream of income from mortgage payments.
  • commercial mortgage-backed security

Now these are credit default swaps against commercial mortgage-backed securities.

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Examples

  • Bernanke just announced that the Fed will buy $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities every month until the economy improves.

    Blog text (10)
  • This interest you're paying goes to mortgage-backed security holders, not the banks.

  • Currently, the Fed is buying mortgage-backed securities at a rate of $40 billion each month.

    Blog text (8)
  • What were the major financial institutions and rating agencies doing with their mortgage-backed securities?

    Blog text (14)
  • The Fed will also purchase mortgage-backed securities using the principal payments from its current holdings.

    Blog text (19)
  • Central banks generally avoided the riskiest kinds of mortgage-backed securities.

    Academic text (2008)
  • In many cases, the mortgages are packaged into mortgage-backed securities that bundle hundreds or thousands of loans.

    Blog text (3)
  • The process was enabled by strong investor demand for mortgage-backed securities (MBS).

    Blog text (23)
  • There are liquid financial markets for 30-year U.S. Treasury bonds and for 30-year residential mortgage-backed securities.

    Academic text (2005)
  • At the root of the credit crunch lies the explosion of mortgage-backed securities—the focus of Saskia Sassen's essay.

    Academic text (2008)

Surface Forms

Morphology

mortgage-backed + security

The phrase is compositionally built: 'security' is a tradable asset and 'mortgage-backed' literally means supported or guaranteed by mortgages, so the meaning 'a security backed by a bundle of mortgages' is directly inferable from the parts. The '-backed' construction is a productive, transparent pattern in English (and mirrored in other languages/financial terminology), so learners who know the constituent words can reasonably deduce the MWE even if the topic is somewhat technical.

Etymology

The noun mortgage-backed security comes from the idea that many mortgages back a single investment: banks put lots of home loans together, and the loan 'payments' are used to pay the 'investors'. So it means an investment made from a group of home loans where 'investors' receive those payments.