Quite a Haircut

20 cents on the dollar... awesome

Dec. 6 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. mortgage assets in collateralized debt obligations have lost so much value that the top classes of the securities may be worth as little as 20 cents on the dollar in the event of liquidation, Barclays Plc analysts said in a report.

About 20 percent to 30 percent of principal would be covered for the ``super senior'' portions of mezzanine asset-backed bond CDOs, which mainly contain mortgage bonds and other CDOs initially assigned low investment-grade ratings, New York-based analysts Joseph Astorina, Elena Warshawsky and Wei-Ang Lee wrote yesterday. The senior-most classes of CDOs containing highly rated asset- backed bonds would recoup 30 percent to 65 percent, they wrote.