I don’t know if Angelo Mozilo knows the difference between a curve ball and a split-finger, but given that his 40-year reign as the head of Countrywide Financial is coming to an end, it seems appropriate to reflect on his career as well as his legacy.
While the Mortgage Banker’s Association doesn’t have a Hall of Fame for lenders, two years ago, Mozilo would have been a shoe-in as a first-round inductee if such a distinction existed.
By now, we all know the story: a Brooklyn-...
Talcott Franklin, co-author of the "Mortgage & Asset Backed Securities Litigation Handbook," on when we can expect to see a rebound in housing:
"If you look at the housing bubble that was contributed to by the subprime lending environment, you see the Mount Everest of housing bubbles, as opposed to every housing bubble we have seen...
Our very own Richard Bitner -- managing director here at HW Publishing, and now, a burgeoning author, too -- saw his memoir, Confessions of a Subprime Lender, get some big-time ink today over at the Wall Street Journal.
For those who don't know, Bitner was the president of Kellner Mortgage...
Warren Buffett's words tend to be ones to heed. So we've duly noted his comments on CNBC today, in an exclusive interview with the business news channel. Via MarketWatch:
The Fed should be concerned about both inflation and economic growth, a tough thing to do, [Buffett] explained. But inflation...
Well, that didn't take long. It's not even been a month since the $60 billion bailout/refinancing effort was completed for Residential Capital LLC, the ailing mortgage lending arm tied to GMAC LLC, and already questions are being whispered over the company's future.
Bloomberg gives those whispers some ink:
Whether [the $60 billion is] enough to...
We've noted indicators of pending softness in CRE from time to time in the past here at HW, but today a feature at Bloomberg underscores just how soft the commercial RE sector really is:
Workers building the $3.5 billion Cosmopolitan Resort & Casino on the Las Vegas strip are getting used to their financiers from Deutsche Bank AG ...
Since January,...
We think it's our job here in the BuzzPost to call it like we see it -- and what we're seeing this Monday morning from North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad is nothing less than either blind stupidity or record-setting hubris.
In an op-ed "defense" published Monday by the Wall Street Journal, Conrad says that he never asked for special treatment on a series of mortgages he obtained from...
The WSJ takes on alleged improprieties at banks, which isn't exactly a novel topic these days.
The story zeroes in on the games played with non-performing assets -- a subject near and dear to HW's own editorial heart these days, given that we've been suggesting that many banks are under-reserving relative to the level of reported NPAs on the books.
But when is an NPA not an NPA? Answer -- when...
We'd heard rumors about this, via MarketWatch:
Washington Mutual said Thursday that it is cutting 1,200 more jobs as part of the lender's efforts to reduce costs and return to profitability. More than half of the job cuts -- 775 positions -- are in California and Florida, two formerly booming real estate markets that have been hit hard...
A secondary mortgage market expert I think extremely highly of emailed me last night with the following terse take on the state of the financial markets:
I think we're on the cusp of another sewer break on the news front ... get your waders on ...
No kidding. While March may have represented the worst of the credit crunch thus far, May and June are looking to shape up as particularly troublesome for a side of the mortgage market that, so far, has seen...
