Loan Think

What We're Hearing

Residential lenders are starting to report their loan volumes for the fourth quarter and the numbers -- to say the least -- look good. Among wholesalers, firms with stellar fourth quarter numbers include Principal Residential Mortgage (up 458%), and B.F. Saul Mortgage (up 280%). Final fourth quarter rankings will be published by National Mortgage News and should be ready by mid-February...

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Mark Korell, who once headed Norwest Mortgage (once the nation's largest mortgage banker) has resurfaced after a brief stint at retirement. Korell is now chairman of mortgage banking for Guaranty Bank and Trust , a $1 billion asset community institution based in the Mile High City. Until Mark joined the company two months ago, the privately-held Guaranty had no presence in the residential or commercial mortgage markets...

Return of the Resolution Trust Corporation? A new paper by American Enterprise Institute resident scholar John Makin estimates that the Japanese banking system has a negative net worth of $1 trillion. Japan has been slow to clean up its ailing banks and their bad loans. Former FDIC/RTC chairman Bill Seidman has advised Japan to get its act together and recognize the severity of the problem but with Japan's economy in a virtual recession little seems to be getting done...

Meanwhile, one recent press report noted that China's banks have at least $400 billion in bad loans that need to be liquidated...

Former Fannie Mae president Larry Small is continuing to receive some bad press for his management style in regard to his new employer, the Smithsonian Institution. A group of 170 scholars -- many from the nation's top universities -- said in a recent letter to the institution's board of regents that, "If Mr. Small is permitted to continue his agenda, the Smithsonian will become very much like a shopping mall with every inch devoted to the promotion of a corporation or its products." Small's last year at Fannie, 1999, he earned a cool $5.1 million in salary and other compensation. He also is a former top executive at Citicorp.


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