The National Space Council recently heard suggestions ranging from establishing a licensing "clearinghouse" to temporarily doing away with licensing altogether.
John Kenneth Galbraith said, “The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” How about forecasts of how dramatic this downturn has been for residential lenders and related third parties? What is making the headlines these days are companies that are not reducing their workforce, since on the flipside nearly every lender, large and small, are having layoffs, as well as many vendors from small to large (like ICE’s cutbacks in its mortgage group which had an operating loss for the second quarter of $6 million). Behind the scenes? STRATMOR Partner Jim Cameron notes, “While the industry struggles with downsizing, correspondent investors are seeing a greater incidence of manufacturing defects as loans are delivered to them. The industry is originating ‘harder to do’ loans and lenders are cutting staff which is not a great combination.” (Today’s podcast is available here and this week’s is sponso