Thornburg Mortgage RIP

Our condolences to employees of local mortgage securitization company Thornburg Mortgage, which announced plans to cease operations a couple of weeks ago.

• Thornburg Mortgage Announces Additional Forbearance Agreements, Sale of Its Remaining Assets and Discontinuance of Operations
• Thornburg Mortgage Drops Other Shoe (Updated)
• The House Thornburg Lost

No analysis. I just plumbed the third article to find out what went wrong: according to the article they were borrowing over the short term, secured by packages of AAA-rated mortgages; when their lenders lost faith in the ratings of the mortgages (that's the discussion of "Alt-A," etc.) the fact that they were moderately leveraged (12.5:1) caused their funding formula to suddenly not make sense.

All the other stuff, about taxes, etc. is just sound and fury as far as I can tell; if Thornburg were still in business nobody would be talking about whether they're paying enough taxes.