It’s still Viva Las Vegas, at least for one financial confab

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Under fire, Wells Fargo & Co. canceled a planned Las Vegas getaway for some of its key mortgage employees. But another financial-industry gathering is going on in Vegas as scheduled this week: the American Securitization Forum’s annual convention.

The ASF confab is for the folks who brought us, among other securities, the alphabet soup of mortgage-backed bonds that are heavily responsible for the financial system crash.

The convention, as in recent years, is taking place at the Venetian Hotel.

I attended last year, and frankly, most of what goes on in the public sessions are extremely dull technical discussions that are of little interest to anyone but the bankers, lawyers, accountants and others who are cogs deep inside the securitization machine.

The real action happened in private meetings between securities sellers and investors -- or used to, anyway.

This year, the agenda includes public panels that amount to picking up the pieces of the broken securitization machine.

A few of the panel topics: ‘State Mortgage Finance and Foreclosure-Avoidance Legislation,’ ‘Litigation and Enforcement: Risks and Trends’ and ‘TARP, TALF and other Government Programs: Securitization Market Implications.’

You get the picture.

George Miller, executive director of the forum, said real work would get done at the convention, the Wall Street Journal’s Deal Journal blog reported. ‘No one should be defensive about being here,’ Miller told the crowd.

But perhaps in a sign of the times, Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairwoman Sheila Bair canceled her appearance. She was supposed to give the opening speech today but instead sent Sandra Thompson, director of the FDIC’s division of supervision and consumer protection, in her place.

-- Tom Petruno