Who says investment banking is deal. The new deal brokers on The Street are the Fed, Treasury and, increasingly, the FDIC. Under Sheila Bair, the FDIC’s role in the credit crunch is getting larger and larger. When Indymac went down, it caused great concern that the FDIC’s industry-funded deposit insurance fund would quickly be depleted [...]

JP Morgan Chase is the big winner in the market carnage.

Last night, as I was taunting my dog with a hunk of cheddar cheese waved above her nose, the look in her eye reminded me that there is talk among loan agents of a mythical refi boom. Not your parent’s refi boom, or the 48 minute refi boom in January, but a real one. Of [...]

Consider this list of news for the week (even though it’s only Monday): Best Buy Co. agreed to buy Napster (digital downloading of music) for $121 million.

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 [...]

Credit Spreads What is a “credit spread”? It is a yield difference, usually compared to a US Treasury security with a similar maturity, which reflects the issuer’s credit quality. One indicator that the bank could be in trouble is the widening of its credit spreads, evidence that investors believe the debt is riskier. Washington Mutual’s [...]

One of life’s mysteries is how a 2-pound box of chocolates can make me gain 5 pounds! WAMU Ousts CEO Washington Mutual removed 20+ year veteran CEO Kerry Killinger, and replaced him with former Independence Bancorp and Sovereign Bancorp exec Alan Fishman. WaMu lost $3.3 billion in the second quarter as it set aside large [...]

A man was telling his neighbor in Sun City Center, “I just bought a new hearing aid. It cost me four thousand dollars, but its state of the art. It’s perfect.”

“Do not corner something that you know is meaner than you.” And is there anything meaner than me when I feel I was on the bad side of a trade? Last week I bought some Krispy Kreme stock for my daughter. This week it was lower! So I called Charles Schwab to complain, and ask [...]

With the continued slowdown in the economy, the family made the decision to let my son go. After 16 years we had a certain amount of loyalty, but the harsh realities had set in. He wondered why it was him and not his younger sister, and I explained that she had edged him out on [...]