From the category archives:

Banks and Banking

Fannie Mae: In Dire Need of Cash, Announces Plans to Lose More on Purpose

by Alex Stenback 11.11.2008

Two bits of news related to Fannie Mae.  First, they are still losing money, but fast, and may need more government largess to survive.  From bloomberg: Fannie Mae may need more than the $100 billion in funding pledged by the U.S. Treasury to stay afloat after reporting a record $29 billion loss and confronting more difficulty [...]

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Coming Soon? FDIC’s Loan Modification Plan, Foreclosure Moratorium

by Alex Stenback 11.06.2008

Today's Wall Street Journal has an update on the forthcoming loan modification program from the Treasury and FDIC that we mentioned last week.  It appears they are getting closer: And the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and other government agencies are said to be close to announcing a government program to address residential foreclosures [...]

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Case-Schiller: Twin Cities Home Prices Down 13.8%

by Alex Stenback 10.28.2008

  Standard & Poors has released the August 08 print of the Case-Schiller Home Price Index.  We pulled the graphic above to highlight what's happening in Minneapolis/St. Paul. Click the graphic to make it bigger, or take our word that the average home price in the Twin Cities for August 2008 was 13.8% lower than August 2007.  Though [...]

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Minnesota Independent: Q&A on the Bailout

by Alex Stenback 09.24.2008

Despite the kind of incendiary nature of the headline, this Q&A with Prentiss Cox (UofM law professor, and one of the principal architects of MN predatory lending law) and Mollie Preismeyer over at the Minnesota Independent is actually quite good. Look, this is outrageous. I mean, is it necessary to do a $700 billion bailout? [...]

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Everything You Need to Know About the IndyMac-FDIC Takeover

by Alex Stenback 07.16.2008

Just utter brilliance from Tanta at Calculated Risk on the FDIC takeover of Indymac Bank and the ensuing shenanigans (police calls, fisticuffs, etc.) reported by the LA Times: Mr. Bash is quite upset that the price of nearly doubling his deposit insurance coverage at no monetary cost to him is several days worth of red [...]

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Dumped, Mortgage Style

by Alex Stenback 04.08.2008

That letter you get from your home equity lender breaking up with you: ——–Dear Homeowner, The time has come to reconsider the nature of our relationship.  This is really hard, so please don’t start crying or anything until you get to the end.  We know the timing is really bad, what with the trip we [...]

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Star-Tribune on Centennial Mortgage & Funding

by Alex Stenback 03.29.2008

Jim Buchta provides some additional color to the story we broke right here yesterday: Bill Walsh said that such orders, issued in this case for what he calls "substantial financial problems," are unusual for a company this size…in 2006, the latest year for which data was available, Centennial closed 1,828 mortgages. We’d like to re-iterate [...]

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Breaking News: Lender with 9 Local Branches Can’t Fund Loans, Ordered to Cease and Desist

by Alex Stenback 03.28.2008

We’ve only got a single source on this for now (working on more) so we’ll leave the name of this outfit blind until we can get some confirmation.  Name now confirmed as Centennial Mortgage and Funding, out of Bloomington, see update below.——– The word is a south-metro headquarted Mortgage lender Centennial Mortgage and Funding, a [...]

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Pain for Prime Borrowers: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac to Hike Fees; or How a Three-Point Difference in Your Credit Score Could Cost You Thousands.

by Alex Stenback 03.17.2008

Back in November of 2007, Fannie and Freddie (the two GSE’s, or "Agencies" under whose guidelines some 70% of mortgages are underwritten) announced additional fees which would be tacked onto mortgages for borrowers with credit scores below 680 as of March 1st.  We reported on this here. Since then, credit markets have deteriorated further, so [...]

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