Marc's Mortgage Matter's

Toyota is developing a miniature, environmentally friendly car that is powered entirely by a rechargeable battery. Meanwhile, Detroit is still hard at work on a 6 passenger SUV that runs on rain forest trees and panda blood.

It would appear that the Fed has been the only real buyer of mortgage-backed securities recently. Will that be enough? Unfortunately, as many insiders have seen, mortgages have moved “wider” this week, meaning that mortgage rates are worsening relative to Treasury rates. Although the Fed has tremendous resources, the market is not convinced that mortgages are the place to put its money. And the market is also worried about the supply of Treasury securities that will need to be sold in order to finance this effort. That is why rates this past week went up about a quarter percent (still so darn low) and lenders are being harsh on extensions to boot.

Trammell Crow has died at age 94. He once had interests in nearly 300 million square feet of developed real estate, comprising 8,000 properties in more than 100 cities. His projects, always done with partners, included the Dallas Market Center , the Peachtree Center in Atlanta and the Embarcadero Center in San Francisco , and reached from Kansas City to Hong Kong to Brussels . Both Forbes and The Wall Street Journal had labeled him the largest landlord in the United States .

A Doctor was addressing a large audience:
"The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of us sitting here, years ago. Red meat is awful. Soft drinks corrode your stomach lining. Chinese food is loaded with MSG. High fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realizes the long- term harm caused by the germs in our drinking water. But there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all and we all have, or will, eat it. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it?"

After several seconds of quiet, a 75-year-old man in the front row raised his hand, and softly said, "Wedding Cake."