I haven’t written in awhile and a lot has happened. Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President, James Bullard said it is fair to say that the world is entering a period of exceptionally low interest rates. On the other hand, today stocks are going backwards as investors confront fresh signs that the recession is worsening and worry that efforts to stabilize the beleaguered financial system may not be sufficient.

We lost another big player in the wholesale FHA market as Equifirst went out of business. That makes 333 wholesale lenders that have “imploded” since the beginning of this crisis. The life of the mortgage broker, even us who have been in business almost 20 years with zero complaints lodged against us, are finding more and more restrictions thrown our way. Did you see the 60 Minutes episode with the lead story being the loan salesman from World Savings. The old Pick a Pay or Option Arm is sinking the country. Yes brokers sold the heck out of those toxic instruments (we didn’t originate one of them by the way). The owners of World Savings, seeing the writing on the wall – sold out just before the crash to Wachovia and now Wachovia is gone too. But where do you caste blame – I for one, and I know this is homerish, blame Wall Street. They created the instrument the brokers just sold it. Was there some fraud – of course but that wasn’t the bailiwick of brokers – the loan officers of the banks under increasing pressure to keep volume up were as bad or worse.

Where we go from here, I have no idea. It is certainly a new mortgage paradigm. The banks are heaping as much blame as possible at the brokers door so they will have the marketplace to themselves. We still have the best interest rates out there and we still have our impeccable service. Our rates beat the banks every time. Give us a call. Courage!