Today’s links on loan limits, debt ceiling options, U.S. and Europe’s debt quagmires, Finreg year 1, trading don’ts, and your best source for NFL news. -’Sacred AAA Rating’ At Risk Even Without Default (InvestmentNews) -Debt Ceiling Charade: The 3 Smart Options (CalculatedRisk) -”Impossible Math” behind Euro Crisis (PragmaticCapitalist) -Mortgage Bankers Reverse Course On Loan Limits [...]

Today’s links include short sale vs. foreclosure tips, two posts from StoneStreetAdvisors who’s on fire this week, and Sage words on analyzing markets—a must-read for mortgage folks who stare at MBS charts all day. So click play on the funky bilingual Cinco De Mayo soundtrack and read up… -Has bay area real estate gone bonkers? [...]

The folks at FICO Labs are coming out with a new way to predict the likelihood a borrower will default, even if they can afford their mortgage. Predicting strategic defaults is the goal, with a strategic default being where borrowers, who can afford their monthly mortgage payment, opt not to pay it – often because [...]

What If All Mortgages Were 1% Lower? A Wall Street acquaintance of mine wrote to me about dropping trillions of dollars of mortgages by 1%. “I think that something like it may just happen. Many people I’ve talked to have said the same thing: ‘The money would go directly to the borrowers to help our [...]

Short Sales Take 6-13 Months A study put out by Deutsche Bank ranked GMAC ranked as the top servicer among all prime mortgage servicers based on short sale timelines – six months! The investment bank’s survey showed that a short sale generated a higher recovery than an REO sale. For “prime” short sales, GMAC was [...]

Fannie Mae Relief For Homeowners Near Oil Spill CitiMortgage will suspend all foreclosure sales and filings for 90 days on its 1st mortgages within 25 miles of the Gulf coast. Fannie Mae said that servicers of Fannie-backed loans may immediately suspend or lower payments on mortgages for borrowers whose income or property were affected by [...]

Rates Up On New Home Sales & Durable Goods Numbers Today we had Durable Goods (very volatile) and a big New Home Sales number. Durable Goods were expected to be +.3% for March and originally reported as +.5% in February, the third consecutive monthly increase (although most of the gain in February’s number was due [...]

I was reminded that 70% of the US economy is propelled by consumers, all consumers. Last night, after giving a speech to some UC Berkeley econ students, I was in a book store and the gal in front of me asked the clerk, “Do you have a book on ‘Karmageddon’? Its like, when everybody is [...]

Geithner’s Testimony on Future of Housing Finance Yesterday the House Financial Services Committee held a hearing to discuss the future of housing finance, trying to start answering questions about what the new system should do. Many people spoke, although Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner was the headline witness with 17 pages of testimony. “It’s important as [...]

One top ex-secondary guy wrote to me and said, “Things I sort of miss hearing in mortgage banking: “What are rates gonna do tomorrow?” “Why is IndyMac a point better than we are?” Anything associated with “Did you hear what they said on CNBC this morning…….?” “How come I’m losing money on the hedge?” And [...]