and   Fed May Not Need to Buy All Authorized MBS, Two Officials Say – By Vivien Lou Chen and Steve Matthews – The Federal Reserve may not need to buy the full $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities the central bank has authorized by year-end, two regional Fed bank [...]

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    great piece – lots of charts – Housing Looks Only a Little Better – By Bud Conrad – Casey’s Daily Dispatch ———— USING HOMEOWNER RESPONSIBILITY SCORES TO IMPROVE VALUATION ESTIMATES – BY STEVE WEISE – Finding accurate values of collateral remains a major challenge [...]

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To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends,

Okay, okay.  Seattle Mariner Ichiro Suzuki is the greatest baseball player to ever play the game.  We were swamped with well over 40 e-mails, some politely disagreeing, some implying that if we were this stupid about Ichiro, we must be pretty stupid about banking. We have lot of Seattle clients, [...]

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My father used to say, “It’s OK to kiss a nun, but don’t get into the habit.”

Speaking of habits, the bond market has become accustomed to the Fed buying mortgages. What if they stopped? Federal Reserve President Lacker suggested the Fed may not need to spend the full amount it pledged($1.25 trillion, for folks keeping [...]

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