“Barclays makes subprime writedown” is the title of the article by Steve Slater. Two points in the articles shocked many people. Slater wrote “It continues to have exposure to some areas under pressure, but the bank said it had sought to limit any future writedowns by valuing all its residential mortgage backed securities CDO collateral and second lien mortgage collateral at zero.” As if zero value is not enough a line says this about placing the risk where it belongs: “This is going to be a one to two year workout period for subprime, the issues are deep and the excesses were severe so there will be a period to transfer the risk from those people who shouldn’t have it to those that should.” Here is the entire article:

Barclays makes subprime writedown