Bad Paper

Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services lowered the ratings on 1,326 classes of U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) certificates issued in the first half of 2007 backed by Alt-A mortgage loans. In addition, S&P placed the ratings on another 567 Alt-A classes on CreditWatch, with negative implications.

According to Standard & Poors the projected credit support for the affected classes is insufficient to maintain the previous ratings, given S&P’s current projected losses.