Marc's Mortgage Matter's

Mark Twain said, “If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed.” If one read the newspaper lately, you’d have seen that it's getting pretty crazy; we're bailing out Wall Street, we're bailing out banks, we're bailing out car companies...In fact, there was a special box on your tax form this year you could check if you want a portion of your taxes to actually go to running the government.


Yesterday Chrysler filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy after talks with a small group of creditors fell apart. Analysts believe that this will give the company time to finish writing the partnership with the Italian car maker Fiat. The government, which is in effect you and me, has already poured $4 billion in loans into Chrysler and would provide up to $8 billion more to carry the company through bankruptcy. Our tax money at work. Oy!

The “Cramdown” legislation, which would have allowed bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages, failed to pass the Senate yesterday. Despite the administration’s attempts to negotiate with Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo for weeks in order to get their support, but the financial services industry refused to support it. Supporters argued that the measure would have kept 1.7 million borrowers in their homes, and would have allowed bankruptcy judges to lower the interest rate or principal balance on troubled mortgages. Bottom line is these banks really don't want to play ball - we see this over and over almost weekly now.

Treasury prices fell this week, and rates increased, for a 3rd straight day yesterday (and we could be there again today) and April may have the largest price drop since January. The yield on the 10-yr hasn’t been this high since around Thanksgiving. Stocks, however, seem to have had their biggest monthly gain in 9 years! Morttgage rates continued a slow rise this week again - so if your not locked in yet........