Jordan Peele met his famous comedy partner Keegan-Michael Key around 2002 at Second City in Chicago, and eventually performed this classic routine that every air traveler should see. This morning I head to Chicago, and from there to the MMLA event in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Given my time with originators last week, the email traffic over the weekend, lenders are very concerned about overcapacity and therefore overhead. On a micro level, staff that may have been held onto “just in case” volume picked up are being reviewed. On a bigger scale, owners of lenders and vendors have seen their values decline and mergers and acquisitions are definitely a topic. The latest example of this is Denver’s Proprietary Capital announcing plans to buy 100 percent of New Jersey’s American Financial Resources (AFR); employees and counterparties were told Friday. And on a macro level, this week the economic calendar features fresh updates on inflation, with both the July Consumer Price Index and the Producer Price Index reports. We also have auctions of three- and 10-year notes and 30-year bonds going off at higher amounts than originally forecast and yields generally on the rise. Lots going on! (Today’s podcast can be found here and is sponsored by SimpleNexus, an nCino Company, developer of mortgage technology uniting the people, systems, and stages of the mortgage process into one seamless, end-to-end solution. Listen to an interview with STRATMOR’s Brett McCracken on how mortgage companies can utilize secret shopping.)