As rumors of correspondent, wholesale, and retail company cutbacks or closings continue to bounce around our biz, how about this non-mortgage tidbit. During his off hours in New York, Ira S. found yet another fun and fascinating website: a map of the U.S. that one can zoom in/out of, and it will list the resident looked up most on Wikipedia (they had to be born, lived in, or somehow connected to the city). Much less fun is the fact that Capital markets staffs have turned their attention, due to recent rate drops, to renegotiations in the primary markets with LOs and AEs. In the secondary markets, of course, Wall Street firms don’t renegotiate hedge positions. In other words, one can’t call up Morgan Stanley or BAML or Multi-Bank Securities and whine, “Uh, remember that MBS we sold you three weeks ago? Well, rates have moved, and we want a better price or else.” In fact, I’ve even heard nervousness from lenders about margin calls from broker-dealers, especially if we continue to see bond prices rally and rates drop due to an economic slowdown. Will the Fed raise rates too much, dampening consumer spending and increasing the odds of an actual declared recession? Right now employment is still strong, as are family and corporate balance sheets especially after refinancing trillions of dollars of debt in 2020 and 2021. Heck, even fancy coffee places like Starbucks, which reported record revenue yesterday, are seeing increased sales of premium cups of coffee. (Today’s podcast is available here and this week’s 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. Listen to an interview with Seth Sprague on the current mortgage servicing rights (MSR) market.)