Best Rates and Worst President

30 year fix is jumping between 4.75% and 5.375%. We lock only after we have a complete application in so make it easy and get approved today at www.BuyorRefi.Biz
Okay, so Chase is out of wholesale. (1) They have no more wholesale division, (2) they won’t buy loans from correspondents who got their loans from brokers, and (3) Chase’s warehouse lending division apparently won’t issue lines to mortgage bankers who do more than a small amount of third party business. As we started saying 6-9 months ago, wholesale may not go away entirely, but there’s clearly a trend against it. We hope you’re working hard on building your retail business. The good news is I’m not them and still use Chase as on of my top lenders.
If we had to guess, we’d say that yes, a year or three from now there will still be some sort of wholesale. But brokers will have significant net worth requirements, they’ll have some kind of buy-back responsibility, and there will be all sorts of barriers to entry, for the brokers and the bankers. That’s our guess.
If you measure company size by their market cap, we were curious how many of the top ten world-wide were American. The answer is five, and we found it so interesting that we’ll run the whole table here. All numbers are in billions.

1. $406 Exxon Mobil
6. $177 Proctor & Gamble

2. $214 Wal-Mart Stores
7. $169 Microsoft

3. $209 China Mobile
8. $168 Volkswagen

4. $183 Industrial Bank of China
9. $166 Royal Dutch Shell

5. $178 General Electric
10. $161 Petrochina

Of the next ten biggest, four were American.

The Chicago Tribune (owner of the L.A. Times) is in bankruptcy, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer may not survive the month, and newspapers across the land are barely staying alive. But the New York Times will be forever, right? Well, think again. They have $1.0 billion of debt on their books, $400 million of which comes due over the next five months, and only $46 million of cash reserves.

It’s always fun to compare Presidents by certain metrics. Now that Bush has finished his eight years, the following numbers were just compiled for how the Dow Jones Industrial Index did on average each year for him and a few others:

28% Clinton
11% Bush (the dad)

21% Eisenhower
6% Johnson

17% Reagan
6% Kennedy

16% Ford
0% Carter

16% Truman
-2% Bush (son)

One thing to remember, though: Correlation is not causation.

Everyone knows one or two of Satchel Paige’s six rules of life, but every so often, it’s worth reading them all: (1) Avoid fried foods cause they anger up the blood, (2) If your stomach disputes you, lay down and pacify it with cool thoughts, (3) Keep the juices flowing by jangling around lightly as you move, (4) Go very light on vices such as carrying on in society. The social ramble just ain’t restful. (5) Avoid running at all times, and (6), Don’t look back. Someone might be gainin’ on you. This all must have helped, as he was pitching in the Major Leagues at age 48.