What We're Hearing

The big picture: the Dow is at 10,400 which means we need to recover just another 3,600 points and the economic meltdown of 2008 will be just a distant memory, a blip on the financial radar screen, so to speak. Not exactly. Unemployment is still sky high and home prices aren't about to "snap back" any time soon. Think of it this way: the home price appreciation we saw from 2002 to 2007 is something that we might "normally" see over a 20-year period, not a five-year period. That's just my opinion, of course. Meanwhile, we hear that plenty of former mortgage traders and MBS analysts who work on Wall Street are still hunting for jobs. Also, the price of higher-rated subprime MBS tranches have risen to the point that they are no longer considered bargains. And one last note: former NAMB chief Marc Savitt is working on a website that (so, we are told) won't exactly be backing Andrew Cuomo for governor. A former HUD secretary, Mr. Cuomo is the New York state attorney general and the man behind HVCC...