This past weekend a guest on George Stephanopoulos’ ‘This Week’ program suggested that business leaders were waging a strike of sorts against President Obama, comparing it to what ‘capitalists’ did against President Roosevelt during the years preceding WWII. In other words, the thought is this: that business leaders hate Obama and his policies and have purposely held back hiring, hoping he will fail and that a new president (preferably a Republican) gets elected who will usher in a period of business friendly laws and regulations. I’m not a historian so I can’t tell you if the comparison to Roosevelt is accurate. As for Obama, it’s no secret that bankers hate Dodd-Frank which they lay squarely on him and the two politicians whose names grace the legislation. In the mortgage space we know this: lenders of all sorts are very busy right now with refi applications. In short, business is great – unless you happen to be Bank of America. But we’ve heard stories of lenders holding back on hiring – not necessarily because they dislike the president, but because they know the cyclical nature of mortgage banking can be vicious.
