It isn't that "no company" is willing to pay 25 cents, it's that many of the "qualified to buy" companies are unwilling to do so while others are buying as much as they can afford. Me (and you) are locked out.

As to what I know, do the arithmetic with some horrendous default and forclosure recovery rates and see what you think the net present value of these loans is. (BTW - It's not just securitized home loans. There are also corporate bonds that are selling at a significant discount. Some are bargains, some aren't.)

However, in a very real sense, it doesn't matter what I know. If I'm willing to risk my money, why should the govt risk yours?

Well, there aren't enough people (or corporations) willing to risk their money with little to know knowledge of what is going on to do what the government needs to.

You can't do any basic arithmetic where credit default swaps are involved to compute EV. It's to the point where even the people holding them don't know how much they can potentially be on the hook for, but it's a far larger number than any of the mortgages they're based on. A foreclosure rate of even 10% can easily wipe you clean if you're betting 10x on it.