1.  Bond Bears Dumping Two-Year Treasuries Defy History - By Oliver Biggadike and Daniel Kruger -  Bond investors that drove two-year Treasuries down on Aug. 21 by the most since early June after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the economy is “beginning to emerge” from recession may find themselves wishing they had held onto the securities. - Bloomberg

2.  Window Closing on Talent Exodus From Banks, GFI’s Gooch Says - By Shannon D. Harrington - An exodus of traders and salespeople from Wall Street’s largest firms that allowed smaller brokerages to snap up talent has reversed, said Michael Gooch, chief executive officer of New York-based broker GFI Group Inc. - Bloomberg

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on Re-Remics: Remember me? Wall Street repackages debt for sale - By MATT APUZZO - AP -  Yahoo

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Analyst Bove sees 150-200 more U.S. bank failures -  A prominent banking analyst said on Sunday that 150 to 200 more U.S. banks will fail in the current banking crisis, and the industry's payments to keep the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp afloat could eat up 25 percent of pretax income in 2010. - Reuters

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3 important charts - The Fed's balance sheet - latest trends -  A few days ago the Fed published it's monthly report on the bank's balance sheet trends and the various credit facilities (the full report is included below). - ... 1. The total assets on the balance sheet have been stable at about $2 trillion. It's hard to imagine how it is possible to avoid balance sheet growth with all the quantitative easing. However the purchases of securities have been entirely offset by reductions in the various liquidity facilities. ... -  - Sober Look Blog

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DvD Insights - Recent Advances in Asset and Liability Management, an Introduction to Multinomial Logit for Modeling Mortgage Default and Prepayment - Author: Donald R. van Deventer - Traditional asset and liability management (ALM) has ignored mortgage defaults and focused on interest rate-driven and mortgage age-driven prepayment.  The events of the last two years have made it more obvious that prepayment and default are intimately linked and that home prices are a critical driver of both probabilities.  This post explains how mortgage prepayment and default are modeled on an integrated basis using multinomial logit - riskcenter.com 

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NOT BRANCHING OUT INTO THE INNER-CITY MARKET - BY PHIL HALL - Last week, the Associated Press ran a news item that should have created a wave of teeth-grinding throughout the financial services industry: Between 2004 and 2008, 10,000 full-service bank branches sprung up across the country, but barely one in 10 of these branches were located in inner-city neighborhoods with a predominantly minority population. - MortgageOrb