Chinese investors buying mortgage-back securities

Not so "toxic" to the Chinese, so it seems.

China's $200 billion sovereign wealth fund, which suffered big paper losses on stakes in Morgan Stanley (MS, Fortune 500) and Blackstone (BX), is set to invest up to $2 billion in U.S. mortgages as it eyes a property market recovery, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Monday.

China Investment Corp. (CIC) plans to invest soon in U.S. taxpayer subsidized investment funds of toxic mortgage-backed securities, which it sees as a safer bet than buying into the Federal Reserve's Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility (TALF).

Under the Public-Private Investment Plan (PPIP) launched earlier this year, the U.S. government plans to seed a number of public-private investment funds that would combine taxpayer money with private capital to buy as much as $40 billion in toxic securities from banks.

Compared with TALF, the new and smaller PPIP program focuses on safer toxic securities, which must have triple-A ratings from at least two agencies, and are debts guaranteed by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), sources explained.

"In this case, CIC feels safer to invest and the safer it feels, the more confident it will naturally feel about its investments, as well as in the prospects for the U.S. economy," said one of the sources.

SOURCE: CNN