Regulation Weariness Catches Up With Lenders A good wife always forgives her husband when she’s wrong. Let’s hope that anyone in mortgage banking doesn’t think that they were wrong for going into this profession. What am I hearing from the origination trenches out there? Well, for the most part it mixed, but I won’t sugarcoat
January 2010
The big news yesterday, were the minutes from the mid-December Fed meeting (with the usual 3 week lag). You can see The Basis Point’s full summary here. In short, The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) still sees a modest recovery this year, e.g., one that will bring only a “slow improvement” in the nation’s severe
We missed this BusinessWeek interview with Paul Volcker over the holidays but after reading it, we’re in his corner on bank reform and said something very similar earlier in December when McCain proposed reinstating Glass Steagall. It’s just that Volcker is much more definitive about it. He clarified that he’s not advocating an outright return
Below are our excerpts of key elements from Fed minutes from their last FOMC meeting on December 15-16. The excerpts cover the following: Fed’s view on whether economic recovery will last, support for tame inflation even with volatile energy prices, bank standards to remain tight because of commercial real estate strains, and jobless rate likely
Today, ADP, a provider of payroll services to 22 million Americans employed in the private sector, released their monthly jobs data which showed that the economy lost -84k jobs in December. This was a bit worse than expected, but the November number was revised better from -169k to -145k. Although overall economic activity is stabilizing
What Do Foo Fighters Know Mortgage Rates? Why can’t automated answering services at mortgage companies be more like the one at Nestle Crunch’s Hotline at 800-295-0051? When asked if you want to continue in English or Spanish, just wait for about 10 seconds, listen to the options and press “4”. Listen to the options again,
Jargon Watch I had my standard “beginning of the year” meeting with the family. My soon-to-be 18-yr old son reported that this time in his life is “unprecedented” for him, and that he is working on his “exit strategy” from high school. He then said that this would be an “historic opportunity” for me to
WeeklyBasis is normally published Fridays, but this Monday report is an exception so I can do an outlook on this first business day of 2010. To summarize, my outlook is for waning Fed support to push rates to about 1% higher, and choppy economic recovery marked by modest GDP growth and minimal employment improvement. Rationale
This report covers weeks 51 and 52 of a mortgage bond purchase program by the Federal Reserve—here’s week 50. Between December 17 and 30, the Fed bought $24.3b net of mortgage bonds, with $15b bought from Dec. 17-23 and $9.3b bought from Dec. 24-30—this was a weekly low for the program, with the last low
Goodbye, 2009. Typing “2009” is so much easier than typing “2010”, but such is life. And folks who are better at using words than I am (“than me”?) say 2010 is pronounced “twenty-ten”, not “two-thousand ten”. Speaking of “2’s” and “1’s”, The U.S. Treasury had a record year of debt sales last year, selling more
Goodbye, 2009. Typing “2009” is so much easier than typing “2010”, but such is life. And folks who are better at using words than I am (“than me”?) say 2010 is pronounced “twenty-ten”, not “two-thousand ten”. Speaking of “2’s” and “1’s”, The U.S. Treasury had a record year of debt sales last year, selling more