As financial markets froze this very week in 2007, the real-time media market was catching fire. So instead of summarizing it all with a 140 character Tweet, below we offer some broader perspective by bringing everyone’s favorite obsessions together: mortgage rates, Twitter, and iPhones. Stat-filled timeline and rate chart are included. Home prices started falling [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Bear Stearns’
The Legend of Bond Trader & Pop Artist Eddie Rincon
Displayed below are three pictures of the same velvet painting entitled Ride The Storm. The first photo of the painting was taken on August 11, 2007 when massive market storms took root. The second photo was taken August 3, 2008. The third photo was taken last weekend: April 17, 2010. The obvious physical change in [...]
Ride The Storm, Part 2: Markets Don’t Die, They Just Evolve
In our first quarterly report of 2008, we proposed “Ride The Storm” as phrase of the year, and discussed how aggressive Fed rate cuts and higher conforming loan limits might “break the storm clouds” in mortgage and financial markets. As 2008 moved on, 85-year-old investment bank Bear Stearns collapsed, Congress passed two economic and housing [...]
Chase Buys WAMU for $1.9b After It Fails, Gets WAMU & Bear For $3.1b
After its bargain $1.9b acquisition of WAMU’s deposits and retail bank branch network today, JP Morgan Chase is solidified as a dominant force amidst the global banking chaos. This follows their $1.2 billion acquisition of investment banking giant Bear Stearns on May 29. The WAMU deal came after the FDIC seized WAMU last night following [...]
Lehman and Washington Mutual Teetering, Retail Sales Fall, PPI Inflation Still High
Remember when the mortgage business was fun? People enjoyed their work, and the industry stayed out of the news? When your parents didn’t quite know what you did for a living? When rates mattered more than underwriting guidelines? When we thought that the worst was over – people would liken this to a baseball game [...]
Greenwich Absorbs Bear Stearns MBS Team, Fannie Management Shakeup, Bank Debt Coming Due
What is the Thursday before a Labor Day weekend like? Well, besides office staffs around the nation wondering if they’re going to be able to leave early Friday afternoon, locks are generally slow. Many agents don’t want to lose three days of underwriting/processing time on a short-term lock, so they decide to wait until the [...]
How And When Would a Fannie/Freddie Bailout Happen?
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have had a few good trading days this week, but they’re still ripe for a near-term Treasury bailout if capital problems persist. As NY Times writer Gretchen Morgenson pointed out Sunday, this bailout is complicated by credit default insurance (or swaps). She’s covered this otherwise under-reported area of the credit [...]
Is Bill Gates Last Day Like A Mortgage Exec’s Last Day?
Some experts believe that, as a typical consumer, my financial well-being can be measured by 5 basic indicators: job creation, changes in real wages, changes in home prices, changes in equity prices, and access to credit. Let’s see… mortgage bankers (and others in many other industries) are seeing “negative” job creation, my real wages are [...]
WaMu Brokerage Closes, Florida, FHA Rules, Mortgage Prices
Does $5 billion buy you the right to shutter Washington Mutual’s broker business? You bet it does. It buys you the right to tell Washington Mutual to eliminate the business channel by May 31st (loans must lock by tomorrow, and most loans must fund by June 13th). WaMu announced yesterday to their employees that they [...]
Regulators Grill Fed on Bear’s ‘Risky Business’
After two days of Congressional hearings exploring the Bear Stearns bailout, it’s bailout burnout. Lawmakers grilling those who brokered the $2-per-share Bear Stearns bailout during a long, strenuous weekend is not unlike the mom in Risky Business grilling her son Joel (Tom Cruise) about why her crystal egg got cracked while she was out of [...]
