Happy Hanukkah (or Chanukah), which began yesterday. Others are looking ahead to Christmas, with some companies closed Friday the 23rd and some closed Monday the 26th. (The Federal Reserve and the stock market are closed Monday the 26th and then Monday the 2nd.) I am in Chicago where the weather could be termed as “brisk.” There’s a different term that the residents of Fairbanks, Alaska, and my Navy vet father, for that matter, would use to describe their weather, expected to have a high of -35 degrees F today! (To be blunt, which I can be since I’m not reporting to anyone, he’d probably say, “That would freeze the balls off a pool table!”) Weather like that does much more than cause goosebumps, although anyone who knows this song often has them at the 3:08 mark. Plenty of lenders are feeling trapped by current margins and volumes, which probably aren’t going to shoot up in the near future, and some have shifted a portion of their production to home equity lines, with more volume but even less margin. I mention this because the CFPB issued an update to the “What you should know about home equity lines of credit” brochure (HELOC Brochure). The new edition of the HELOC Brochure, available in English and Spanish, is updated to align with the Bureau’s educational efforts, to be more concise, and to improve readability and usability. (Today’s podcast is sponsored by Richey May, a recognized leader in providing specialized advisory, audit, tax, technology, and other services in the mortgage industry and in banking.)