My Mind on Mortgages

Professor Jeremy Siegel wrote this opinion piece for the WSJ yesterday and I thought it was interesting.  In it, Siegel defends the Efficient Market Hypothesis by pointing out that the paradigm in which most Wall Street firms made decisions during the credit boom (which in hindsight look like bad decisions) were steeped in the Great [...]

For anyone involved in business or investing Berkshire-Hathaway’s annual report should be required reading.  Not so much the entire report but at least the letter which is carefully crafted by one of my favorite people, Warren Buffett.  You can read this year’s letter along with past years at this link. I try to read it [...]

The NY Times reported in this article that over half of borrowers who had their loans modified in the first 3 months of 2008 are again at least 30 days delinquent on their mortgage.  This raises questions as to the effectiveness of loan modifications. Or, it may also lead to questions about how loans are [...]

Aaron was recently looking in a folder on his computer and came across this mailer which we sent out in October 2006 warning our past clients about option ARM solicitations.  Option ARMs are mortgage programs that have negative amortization implications when the borrower makes the minimum payment.  Not to say that ALL applications of the [...]

The Economist published this article in their weekly “Economics Focus” section back in October and I’m just getting around to blogging about it.  This section of the magazine deals with theoretical economics so it’s always interesting to see what the best minds in the field are proposing to help fix our current economic problems. In [...]

For those of us who have been hoping for the credit markets to show signs of stabilization we can keep on waiting. Freddie Mac announced last week that they would no longer issue or accept underwriting approvals knows as “accept plus” approvals.  These approvals, which were mostly earned by borrowers with high credit scores and [...]

In another sign of the times Wells Fargo announced today that they were eliminating their 30 year fixed mortgage with interest-only payments for the first 10 years. Because Wells Fargo is a bellwether in our industry other lenders are expected to follow suit.

I came across this blog yesterday and started sifting through the postings.  This site does an excellent job of providing educational postings covering various topics in the mortgage industry. Specifically, I really liked this posting which explains the factors that contributed to the development of the mortgage-backed bond market.  I also blogged about this topic [...]

Last week I blogged about Warren Buffett’s purchase of preferred stock in Goldman Sachs.  Today it was announced that Berkshire Hathaway (the investment firm that Buffett chairs) has reached an agreement to purchase $3 billion in preferred stock in GE. Again I say, if Warren Buffett is jumping in now we have to be near [...]

How important do the markets think the financial bailout is? On news that the $700 billion financial rescue plan got voted down in the House of Representatives th Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by almost 800 points. To put that in perspective, when the markets opened following September 11th the Dow Jones dropped 644 points.