Summary of Senate Bill’s Mortgage Provisions The big news du jour comes from Washington DC, where the Senate approved its version of overhauling our financial-sector regulations. The legislation passed the Senate 59 to 39 and must now be reconciled with a similar bill passed by the House of Representatives in December, before it can be
May 2010
Oil Down, But Are Gas Prices? Scientists say they have developed a car that can run on water. The only catch: the water has to come from the Gulf of Mexico. That aside, it is interesting how the price of oil has gone from over $80 per barrel down below $70 per barrel, and, as
Ongoing Bond Rally Brings Rates Near 2010 Lows Investors buying fixed income securities have taken over the markets like a cold sweeping through a kindergarten. Does it really matter that we have yet another release of some Fed minutes, this time from the meeting less than a month ago? A release from the economics team
Mortgage News vs. Industry Advocacy The other day a reader wrote to me and said, “I keep wondering why you continually defend mortgage brokers and bankers. Hopefully the changes that are coming from Congress should go a long way to reducing the fraud, abuse and overcharging that brokers and some bankers have been doing for
Are You On Global Rich List? You’re richer than you think, I hope. The Global Rich List website generates a wealth ranking for its users based on their annual income. The median income in the United States in 2009 (half above, half below) was $52,000 and if that was your income you are the 58,252,719th
Rate Lows For 2010 Mortgage rates are the lowest they’ve been all year – is your production heading higher? Probably not, so why isn’t mortgage production per agent picking up? Analysts point out that mortgage spreads have not done much, and even if Treasury rates drop, mortgage rates may not follow. On the other hand,
Reporter Passes Out It is not often that one is able to watch a financial newscaster pass out while on the job. And don’t ask me what relevancy a keyboard-playing cat has with any of it. Fed Continues Reign Over Small Banks Well, let’s not beat around the bush. According to the popular press, the
How To Get A Quick 5-Point Credit Score Gain Here’s a tip of the day: if a borrower needs an additional 1-5 pts on a FICO score to qualify for a particular home loan program, with the borrower’s permission use the painless 5 year electronic opt-out on www.OptOutPrescreen.com. Apparently it has a positive impact on
Underwater Homes Drops In Q1 CoreLogic reflected some good news about the housing market. The number of homes where borrowers owe more on the mortgage than the house is worth has dropped to about 11.2 million in the first quarter, down from 11.3 million last year. But we still have about 24% of all residences
The unemployment rate was 4.8% in December 2007 when the recession was declared official, and as of the April 2010 jobs report on Friday, it was 9.9%. We did have the best monthly gain in jobs in four years on the April report with +290k jobs (or +224k ex-Census workers), but we’ve lost 7.72m jobs
Summary of $962b European Bailout Although recent indicators suggest that the Euro-zone economy (16 countries) is slowly and weekly expanding, a default by Greece or anyone else (PIGS: Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain) would slam the European banking system, and in turn ours. As it turns out, the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund
How Lenders Create Rate Sheets Zero-point rates on loans up to $729k held at record lows for the second week last week even though mortgage bond levels might suggest rates would have dropped further. Jumbos also held steady at very attractive levels. Mortgage bonds benefitted as the EU/IMF’s $140b Greece bailout caused investors to sell
Following the EU/IMF’s $140b bailout of Greece last week that came with austerity measures which raise taxes and cut pay for 20% of the Greek workforce, there was rioting in Greece and market turmoil globally. The European Union has now announced a plan to set up a fund that would help prevent the problem from
This week has been quite gut wrenching in the markets, so it’s time for a bit of fun. This awesome diagram originated on San Francisco blog TheBoldItalic along with a good piece on the demise of Hippie Hill—which is the meadow and accompanying hill as you enter Golden Gate Park off Haight Street. It’s a
Saw this picture on Barry Ritholtz’s site which came originally from NYT. A useful diagram of Europe’s debt situation. According to NYT “Banks and governments in these five shaky economies owe each other many billions of euros (converted here to dollars) and have even larger debts to Britain, France and Germany. Arrow widths are proportional
The Bureau of Labor Statistics non-farm payroll report showed that the economy added 290,000 private sector jobs in April. The job loss toll since the recession began in December 2007 at 7.72 million, but this is the biggest monthly gain in four years, and the U.S. has added 573k jobs since January. Bond markets that
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