Rich Sweum's Blog

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Mortgage and Lending - 1st Security Bank - NMLS #115765
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RECENT BLOG POSTS
If you read the rule book, "naked short selling" is not an acceptable practice, but one that the SEC has turned a blind eye to for years.  I thought it was funny when the SEC didn't create a new policy but just decided to enforce an old policy preventing equities gamblers from betting on the demi...
08/12/2008
All I have been able to find out is some general language in the actual bill that says that FHA will be viewing Condo's as SFR's in the future...is this true?  Haven't been able to get clarification from FHA and of course no underwriter is helpful because they haven't seen the notices on it yet. ...
08/10/2008
Headline:  Housing recovery to begin in Q1 of 2009!!!  Hurray Yea, yea, I know, I have been the "pragmatic / negative doomsayer" for some time.  But the one glimmer of hope I have been holding on to is the fact that our economy is totally irrational and counter-intuitive.  Let's loosely examine t...
08/07/2008
Some "No Duh" information, but we all know that the FDIC has a top secret watch list, but Martin Weiss, an economist with an axe to grind has been fairly right on these past 24 months.  He had a conference video call yesterday and revealed some of the Banks and Brokerages that are most susceptibl...
08/07/2008
We have received a few responses back from our Washington delegation regarding our request that they consider supporting the new DPA bill.  Essentially they blow smoke, and alude to the mantra that DPA's are bad done by bad mortgage people.  Kiss DPA goodbye. Here is the response, which was almos...
08/07/2008
...actually, there is an argument to be made that "short term" thinking is actually not thinking at all!  The disaster that will be created down the road by the $25bl bailout of Freddie and Fannie is truly breath-taking.  Capitalism only works if failure is a potential outcome of decision making....
07/23/2008
Update: 9/15...Looks like I should have put Lehman in the lead role.  I don't think the FDIC can afford to allow WAMU to go down, they are a hot potato that can really I spoke with a friend of mine who is a long time WAMU suit.  He has been quietly shopping his resume' for the past year and a hal...
07/17/2008
We are bound to be hearing more and more about the Texas Ratio as tidbits leak out as to what banks are in trouble...here is some background. Texas ratio:  What it is... From Wikipedia The Texas ratio is a measure of a bank's credit troubles. Developed by Gerard Cassidy and others at RBC Capital ...
07/16/2008
As I listened to the blather of Rocky and Bullwinkle (Bernanke and Paulson) today, I couldn't get the image of a wonderful scene from Monte Python's The Holy Grail...The Black Knight, "I'm alright, it's just a flesh wound!" Indymac's failure is not a flesh wound.  Of all the banks that have faile...
07/15/2008
One of my favorite parts of the movie "Perfect Storm" was the nerdy weatherman assessing the incoming weather data and doing a "What if."  What if these 3 things happen...perfect storm! Perfect Storms don't happen very often, rarely in fact.  But, every once in a while, we get to experience "epic...
07/14/2008
Rainmaker
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Richard Sweum

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