“SMONDAY: The moment when Sunday stops feeling like a Sunday and the anxiety of Monday kicks in.” Do you think the shareholders and management of Credit Suisse felt that, given Credit Suisse is being purchased by UBS for $3.3 billion? Remember when CS was a renowned jumbo buyer? Now we can watch the layoffs. The CS price per share marked a 99 percent decline from Credit Suisse’s peak in 2007. Mark Twain said, "The older I get, the more clearly I remember things that never happened.” The S&L Crisis certainly happened, but have regulators, auditors, and rating agencies forgotten about it? Under the “getting ready to fight the last war” category, the Federal Reserve is evaluating tougher rules for midsized banks after the failures of Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB) and Signature Bank (SBNY). It is looking at tougher capital and liquidity requirements and could beef up annual "stress tests" that assess banks
While the musical world mourns the loss of Gary Rossington, the last original Lynyrd Skynyrd band member, and I head to San Diego this morning for the TMC event, but I’ve heard through channels that my cat Myrtle is thinking about copywriting her trill after hearing the news that the Toblerone candy company is removing the Matterhorn from its label due to pressure from Swiss authorities: 80 percent of raw materials must come from Switzerland, so it’s a numbers game. Being a loan officer is a numbers game: so many calls and emails per day, yield so many call backs, yield so many applications, yield so many eventual closings. Day after day, and it is not glamorous. There’s a dog team race that is also a numbers game. The 1,000-mile Iditarod kicked off in Willow, Alaska, 70 miles north of Anchorage, with a finish line in Nome. This year there are only 33 mushers, a record low since the first race in 1973. The average number of starts in the first 50 races was 63 conte
Some things are nearly timeless, like this annual list of “10 Things to Do,” most of which can be applied any year. Here in Las Vegas, the time of sunrise is 6:05AM, and yes, I’ve been up for a few hours by then, not getting into bed. But can’t you almost feel the earth moving around the sun? Anchorage is picking up 6 minutes of daylight per day; Kanas City 4. Over a week that’s… uh… 7 times… well, you can figure it out per week. Every spring it is remarkable. What some consider remarkable, although not in a good way, is how we find mortgage rates in the 7s again, and the talk here at the Lenders One event is what can be done about it. Despite the yield curve being inverted (2-year yields are .8 percent higher than 10-year yields), once again IMBs are searching for hidden ARM buyers, good home equity products, and continuing to offer down payment assistance programs, bond programs, and buydowns. But for many, the hope of 30-year f
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, traditionally associated with love. But on the opposite side of the spectrum, an Ohio animal shelter is offering to write your ex’s name in a litterbox, and let its adoptable cats “go to town.” Someone there knows good PR. Did you know that some countries never know who won the Super Bowl? As the pre-printed “Philadelphia Eagles Super Bowl 2023 Champs” t-shirts are shipped off to places like Guatemala or El Salvador, in this country bond market traders and investors are focused on inflation. The Consumer Price Index report for January is tomorrow and forecast to show a 0.5 percent month-over-month rise with energy prices higher again. The headline year-over-year inflation reading is expected to drop to +6.2 percent from +6.5 percent in December. We probably won’t see inflation back in the 2 percent range unless the labor market softens considerably, and that is not evident. Too much inflation will k