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
Bear Stearns
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
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
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
JP Morgan Chase is the big winner in the market carnage.
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
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
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
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
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
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
The full text of Fed chairman’s testimony before the Congressional Joint Economic Committee today is below. The most important part everyone was waiting for was an explanation of why the Fed chose to bail out Bear Stearns and not individual homeowners. The answer is as follows: “adverse effects would not have been confined to the
Today Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson spoke at the US Chamber of commerce on ‘Current Financial and Housing Markets’. The full text of the speech is below. There are a few highlights. First, he said that the Fed’s announcement in the wake of the Bear Stearns bailout to allow investment banks to access Fed resources like
Fixed and ARM rates are about even following last week’s Fed meeting. Rates dropped about .25% for the two trading sessions ahead of the Fed meeting then rose right back up after the Fed cut the bank-to-bank Fed Funds Rate and the Fed-to-bank Discount Rate by 75 basis points each. These rates are to encourage
On Tuesday, March 11, CNBC Mad Money host Jim Cramer said that Bear Stearns was fine. On Sunday, March 16, JP Morgan Chase announced a bid to take over Bear Stearns for $2 per share with the Federal Reserve as a backup to help with liquidity on bad Bear Stearns debt. This week, Fox Business
Thornburg Mortgage, a key player in A-paper jumbo lending, has secured new lines of credit from Bear Stearns, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Greenwich Capital, Royal Bank of Scotland, and UBS in order to continue buying loans from mortgage bankers and funding wholesale loans. These banks have also agreed to freeze any margin calls on Thornburg until
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