Still Going…Writedowns Hit $120 Billion

Writedowns have been greater-than-expected from Swiss bank UBS, along with reports from some Japanese institutions. The total amount of subprime and CDO-related writedowns has increased to $120 billions, according to estimates.

According to the Wall Street Journal, earlier estimates that had totaled write downs at $108 billion have been corrected somewhat as a recent earnings release from Bank of America added more write downs to this crisis to around $120.9 billion. UBS had previously wrote down around $18.4 billion in 2007, which is an increase from the $4 billion reported after the bank had updated investors in a release. These figures include $2 billion UBS says are related to “other positions related to the US residential mortgage market.” Bank of America had wrote down $5.28 billion in bad positions and an additional $400 million related to securities it had repurchased from funds. This is probably the time to start looking at write downs related to declining debt values to monoline insurers. This number is only a small comparison to what may come from other companies, there's plenty of time for that figure to grow more.