Gravano reportedly was reluctant to testify because he was concerned about possible questions about payment for his book, which he wrote in collaboration with author Peter Maas.

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The third company to declare a payout Monday took a page out of that book, but also followed in the footsteps of Wal-Mart, which accelerated a dividend payment scheduled for early 2013 to get in just under the wire.

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Yet regulators and lawsuit-fearful auditors pressed banks and other financial firms to relentlessly knock down the book value of this subprime paper, even in cases where these obligations were being serviced in the payment of principal and interest.

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