To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends:    · A big report just came out on French bank Societe Generale’s 4.9 billion fraud/trading loss early this year.  Not surprisingly, the thrust was that there was a lack of internal controls.  This is precisely the sort of thing the “C” in our FOCIS Risk Audit looks at – [...]

[Read more →]

How did it get to be the last business day of May already? If you’re sitting at your desk, and the receptionist, with wide eyes, stammers, “Line 2 is the FBI – they want to talk to you!” should you be nervous? Perhaps, or perhaps not, especially if they are looking for help on a [...]

[Read more →]

CreditSights Defends its Bleak Outlook for Monolines - … following criticism from bond insurer Ambac over its most recent assessment.  In a note to readers, CreditSights said it felt Ambac mischaracterized exactly what the CreditSights analyst said. - Research Recap ———— Fannie, Freddie Appraisal Agreement May Violate Law - Dawn Kopecki - Fannie Mae and [...]

[Read more →]

A jumper cable walks into a bar. The bartender says, “I’ll serve you, but don’t start anything.”  Effective June 1, 2008 MGIC is increasing the maximum LTV/CLTV from 85% to 90% for primary residences in Restricted Markets with loan amounts greater than $417,000. Bank of America said that David Sambol, the Countrywide operating chief who [...]

[Read more →]

  pretty colors - ugly chart - Home prices - how low can you go? - Tim Iacono -  themessthatgreenspanmade ———— Fed Keeps Watch on Wall St. — From the Inside - Neil Irwin - … New York Fed employees are working inside major investment banks every day, alongside the Securities and Exchange Commission staff [...]

[Read more →]

I made a mistake today. The “recency effect” says that a person best remembers items from last on a list. One offshoot is that people also tends to remember the last song that they heard on the radio before turning it off, and has that song running through their head all day. For me this [...]

[Read more →]

  has a list - As I see it, 32 commercial banks and thrifts may see the feces hit the fan blades - Reggie Middleton - BoomBustBlog ———— Household Debt Repayment Behaviour: What Role Do Institutions Play? - Burcu Duygan-Bump and Charles Grant -   Federal Reserve Bank of Boston ———— Sacramento: Foreclosure zones turn into [...]

[Read more →]

To Our Clients, Colleagues and Friends:    · When will the housing crisis end?  It will end when the excess inventory of homes for sale gets worked off.  The numbers are simple:  Over the past twenty years, the normal number of homes for sale nationally has averaged 2.6 million.  Today, there are 4.6 million homes for [...]

[Read more →]

Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn’t much, but the reception was excellent. Many agents seem to think that declining markets policies, embraced by investors, will soon go away, and point to Freddie & Fannie’s recent announcements 95 and 97% LTV’s. But in my narrow field of [...]

[Read more →]

  Mary Had a Little Lamb and a Jumbo Mortgage: Caroline Baum - …  With home prices in a handful of hard- hit areas of California and Florida down 10-15 percent last year …with widespread expectations that prices will continue to fall … Fannie Mae is loosening down-payment requirements when a house in these areas [...]

[Read more →]