The risk-free 2-year Treasury began 2022 yielding .73 and is now at 2.52 percent! Does your company offer 2-1 buydown loans? Do your LOs even know what a 2-1 buydown loan is? (If they don’t, bring them up to speed internally or through a program like XINNIX.) Things are changing. My gauge is very unofficial, but the number of emails saying, “Hey Rob, I am retiring but love your Commentary so can you change my email to…” is picking up. And I received this note from a mortgage vet. “Well, with the rates going up, looks like the mortgage industry is heading for another purge. We’ll start seeing the LOs that only had refi business slowly migrate away. Loss of ops staff still continuing. Like we haven’t heard this song before.” Lending aside, what do we make of these recent headlines? Investors place inflation bet on US farmland. Prices for prime Midwest ground climbed by up to a third in the past year as world food prices hit records. Rihanna is making her debut… on Forbes' coveted world's billionaires list. Dubai lures clutch of big crypto firms with tailored regulations: FTX and Binance set up operations in the Gulf state after securing approval under new licensing regime. Amazon inks deals to send its internet satellites into space: Arianespace, the ULA, and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to provide backbone for high-speed networks. Uber adds planes and trains to automobiles in renewed “superapp” push: Ride-booking app aims to become a broader travel hub. Dang there’s lot going on! (Today’s audio version of the commentary is available here and this week’s is sponsored by Optimal Blue, a division of Black Knight. Today’s offers a tag-team discussion with Brennan O’Connell and John Dumonsau on how lenders are using data to create more accurate secondary marketing models.)