It's that time of the year again: one in which financial services columnists wax poetic and ponder the Bailey Building and Loan and how if it existed today (it doesn't really) regulators would sue George Bailey (and Uncle Billy and 'Old Man' Potter since he sat on the board) for fraud to go after the D&O insurance. Who cares if the good folks of Bedford Falls filled the negative net worth hole with their donations! (Sam Wainwright's line of credit would probably be dismissed by the FDIC as sham. Plastics? Hah! Looks like a mixing of commerce and banking to me.) But let's get down to the profit margin equation and ask this very important and basic question: is borrowing short and lending long any riskier than the system we have today? Why not fund seven year loans (the average life of mortgage paper) with deposits that average two or three years? Someone needs to go and do the math and take a look at the past 10 years and figure out how old fashioned balance sheet lenders would've prevailed. I'm not saying (at all) that I prefer the old system. Keep in mind that in the old system the rate paid on savings deposits was regulated by Uncle Sam and thrifts could not offer money market accounts. What happened to change all this? Our good friends at Merrill Lynch had the banking laws changed. Then we had Garn-St. Germain, FIRRERA, Glass-Steagall (torn down), and the list goes on and on. Message: Once you let an industry, any industry, lobby Congress to change the rules of their game, watch out. Message: if it ain't broke, do not fix it. The Genie is out of the bottle and there is no going back. Hark, the Herald Angels sing…
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Elevated delinquency levels have not affected expected losses, however, due to home price appreciation, Fitch Ratings said.
2h ago -
Retail lenders, including Beeline, Tomo Mortgage and Rocket Mortgage, settled with the department over infractions like submitting a false certification to not having the proper liquidity to be in the program.
3h ago -
A pair of bills, one with bipartisan support, look to address the issues around heirs' property so these families can have clear title on their homes.
3h ago -
The agreement, in which the real estate giant admits no wrongdoing, will cover around 70,000 agents.
5h ago -
Doxo plans to fight the FTC complaint, which focuses broadly on consumer finance, but there are signs of confusion about the company's role in mortgages too.
April 25 -
Members of the LGBTQ community were most likely to have experienced housing bias, according to a Zillow survey, which also found many people don't recognize how fair lending laws could help.
April 25