Hi Dave,
An excellent video lecture.

Question !
I am some XYZ bank who has bought **** loads of mortgage backed securities, Now if people have started defaulting (On home loans that they had taken), i get to keep their houses which was a collateral in this case. So ultimately what I land up is a lot of real estate assets. Now in spite of declaring a write down or a loss shouldn't i wait for real estate market to rise and sell of those houses to cover up my losses ( assuming the fact that real estate prices are cyclic) ?
And if at all i am decalring a writedown of lets say 1b$ (that should be equal to the fall in prices of the collaterals i had eg. 1000 houses each falling by $1m value and hence a 1 b$ writedown )

Thanks