Reverses and Subprime 3, Mortgage Brokers, Hedge Fund Wins, TOBs, UBS .   1.  Trying to Stop Foreclosure With a Reverse Mortgage - thanks John Yedinak -  Reverse Mortgage Daily  2.  Tanta has thoughts on WSJ article about using reverse mortgages to get out of subprime mess - thanks Susan Kulakowski -  Calculated Risk 3.  [...]

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 To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends: · How do Americans pay for things? According to studies, we use checks 18.9% of the time v. 18.8% with debit cards 18.4% with credit cards. The rest is a combination of cash, money orders, and prepaid cards and so on. But debit card usage surpassed credit cards for [...]

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Aside from Pakistan and the tiger-mauling story, there is not much happening in the news. Certainly not much in mortgage banking. We had a nice rally (improvement) in Treasury and mortgage prices yesterday, and fortunately it is continuing this morning. The Jobless Claims data provided more signs of possible labor-market weakness. The four-week moving average [...]

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  No one ever says, “It’s only a game!” when their team is winning. Who were the top ARM producers in the first 9 months of 2007? The top 5, in order, were Countrywide, Chase, Wells, WAMU, and Citi. What about Interest Only or Option ARM leaders? Countrywide, Wells, WAMU, Indy, and Wachovia. . For [...]

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I don’t approve of political jokes.  I’ve seen too many of them get elected. Indymac announced additional restrictive guideline changes, especially in the state of Florida . They adopted (in all states) the 5% reduction in LTV in “declining markets”, including those identified by Fannie Mae DU as “being located in either an area of [...]

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To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends: . · Remember those amazing metrics for City Bank we posted last week (a consistent 3.0% ROA, 7.6% net interest margin, 22% efficiency ratio)?  Someone wrote us asking if these returns translated into good returns for shareholders.  The answer is quite a resounding yes. Let’s assume that you had [...]

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Angelo Video, ACA $14 Bln, SWF Chart, Tent Cities,  Short Interest Chart VIDEO - Weekend Fun with Sallie Mae and Countrywide CEOs - points to funny video about Angelo Mozillo -  minyanville  ———— ACA Financial failure would cost banks roughly $13-billion: CIBC analyst by David Pett -  FP Trading Desk  ———— has chart - Your [...]

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According to the Knight-Ridder News Service, the inscription on the metal bands used by the U.S. Department of the Interior to tag migratory birds has been changed.  The bands used to bear the address of the Washington Biological Survey, abbreviated: “Wash.  Biol.  Surv.” until the agency received the following letter from an Arkansas camper: “Dear [...]

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Fitch Downgrades, TAF 2, Bill Gross, MBIA, Insurers, DR. Seuss on CDOs   has a list - Friday Night Lights Out - Keeping up with the downgrades on various RMBS deals is turning into a full time job. Here’s a list of the downgrades issued tonight by Fitch alone — remember, these are the downgrades [...]

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To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends:. . · We were just reading the Wells Fargo presentation from the Dec. 12 Goldman Sachs Financials Services CEO conference.  Here’s one tidbit we found of great interest.  Of the $71.5 billion in HELLOCS they plan to hold in portfolio, a full $11.5 billion (16%) are HELOCS in first [...]

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