The year being half over makes me afraid, and fear makes me eat Ben and Jerry's

You may have noticed my newsletter has enjoyed a small facelift compliments of my friends at Constant Contact.  If you didn't notice, then hi!  It's good to finally not be in your spam-box for including the word "mortgage" in my publication!

Let the deluge of new unsubscribes commence.

Being a reputable article about items pertinent to mortgage lending, I feel compelled to begin with the most obvious topic: the World Cup.  And Brazil just got thunder-spanked by Germany.  Which was oddly satisfying, given our somewhat tumultuous relationship with the Germans.  Probably puts a great big exclamation point on the fact that a large portion of Brazilians were less than thrilled about hosting all the futbol shenannigans.  Evidently massive costs to the country's coffers to flaunt extravagance while a huge portion of the population wallows in abject poverty isn't exactly the stuff that a strong sense of nationalism is made of.  But from our end of things, we made top 8 while not remotely caring about the sport and discovered that our goalie is actually a super-hero ninja (to the point that Wikipedia's article for "Secretary of Defense" was temporarily changed over to 'Tim Howard' in commemoration of his exercise in bad-assery).  So that was fun.

In late June, Pope Francis denounced the legalization of recreational marijuana, harshly criticized the banking system that has generated extreme income inequality aaaaand excommunicated the mafia.  All at once.  To say this guy doesn't give a damn about any political party (or even the "politics" of ending up with some cement shoes) would be an understatement.  I think he has a wheel of "random crap I can do to piss everyone off because I'm the Pope and God told me to" in his Pope-cave and he got bored in June.  Seriously, this guy is like the Mad Hatter finally got ahold of a Pope hat and is unleashing his master plan of utter senselessness.  And I love it.

Speaking of fun religious stuff, Hobby Lobby just walked their unwillingness to provide medical coverage for two types of morning-after pills and IUDs due to a "strong religious preference" all the way to the Supreme Court.  And they won.  A for-profit business just trumped the employee's legal right to that care, should they choose to go that route, because they think it's "like an abortion" even though those methods prevent conception in the first place.  In response, I think I'm going to hire a bunch of people to cross-stitch the message "Congratulations on the unwanted child!" onto a bunch of pillows and try to sell them at Hobby Lobby.  Because I'm pretty sure they sell cross-stitching stuff there and I know a good opportunity when I see it.

A recent collaborative study between 13 institutions has resulted in conclusive evidence showing the   definitive cause of autism is a genetic mutation.  For further information on this topic, please visit HowDoVaccinesCauseAutism.com

In the true spirit of America, an entrepreneur by the name of Zach Danger Brown has begun a kickstarter campaign to make potato salad.  His goal was ten bucks.  He's raised over $44,000.  His primary comment was "It might not be that good.  It's my first potato salad."  This.  Exactly this.  This is why other countries hate us.  And can you really blame them?

African leadership has recently voted to give themselves immunity from war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.  This ruling comes while two sitting presidents and one ousted president are on trial at the International Criminal Court for precisely those things.  Because when you think about it, all those people that they stacked tires on, soaked in gasoline and lit on fire KINDA had it coming. 

The above definitely happened.  A lot.  And our diplomats are supposed to respect these leaders on an international stage.  Makes you feel ever-so-slightly better about our own terrible politicians. 

But I bet I can make you sad about them again!

Hailed as the Democrats' leading opportunity to take the White House after Obama's exit, Hillary Clinton (who has already lost all sorts of elections so I don't know why Dems are all hot-to-trot about her) recently revealed that her family was flat broke when 'ol cigar "smoking" Bill left office.  Per expectations, the Republicans jumped all over it as an example of how if she can't run her own family's finances then she certainly can't run the country's.  I am gonna have to begrudgingly jump on their bandwagon and say, yeah, you're dumb and I don't want my tax dollars spent on pant-suits and Oprah's latest book of the month.

I spent over ten minutes trying to think of "what would a 66-year old woman blow cash on?" and that's the best I got.  Sorry.  I'm somewhat disappointed in myself but I've spent too much time on it already.

On the flip-side, Rick Perry has openly likened homosexuality to alcoholism, claiming they both can be "overcome".  Because I'm sure all those gay people just randomly decided "Hey, I'd love to be criticized by basically everyone and go through a ridiculous social process of validating my sexuality PURELY because I WANT to and not because I am genetically programmed to feel that way."  Glad to see the Grand Old Party is keeping it classy and culturally open. 

Except the opposite of that.

A terrorist group named ISIS is spreading like wildfire over Iraq.  But Bush already hung that "Mission Accomplished" banner on that big ship that one time, so I don't really care.

Seth Rogen and James Franco are under fire from North Korea's dear leader Kim Jong Il, as he vows "merciless retaliation" against their new movie in which they are depicted as being recruited to kill North Korea's dear leader.  Seth Rogen responded by tweeting "usually people vow to kill me after they paid their 12 dollars."  To provide contrast, this is what we have south of the Korean border.

I've kept the relevant stuff to a minimum this time because it's predominantly good news and good news doesn't usually excite anyone.  But it's seriously good news.  The most recent jobs report came in 73,000 over consensus estimates with revisions to previous months putting the first half of 2014 at the best pace since before the recession.  Pending home sales for May came in at +6.1%, well above consensus estimates of 1.5%.  According to CNNMoney.com Florida has two of the highest ranked cities that people are actively moving to (Orlando at #4 and Tampa/Sarasota at #2).  Craptastic GDP numbers (the sole tarnish on an otherwise impeccable report) can be blamed on the terrible winter (because we Floridians fear snow). 

So buy Florida real estate.  Buy the hell out of it.  It never snows here.  We may have some epic mosquitoes, but definitely no snow.  And we have bug spray for mosquitoes.  Do you have bug spray for snow?  I DIDN'T THINK SO.  Point made.  

Tons o' fun to read while you run in the hot, hot sun!

Summer is upon us.  Liam is also enjoying a lot of Dr. Seuss.  Hence the title.

Speaking of summer, Memorial Day happened.  I hope everyone had a lovely long weekend.  And there's no better way to honor those who risk life and limb on our behalf than by having a barbeque and drinking some fine American beer, right?  As long as we do that once a year, we can pretty much just sweep under the rug the crumbling infrastructure and accused corruption of the VA healthcare system (whose budget increases annually and quality of care down-spirals at about the same pace).  Because if you're drunk enough you can't hear dying veterans complain.

This is both disgusting and true.  The commoditization of our military personnel seems to have reached a horrifying inflection point that I hope our elected officials will rectify.  America's "anything for profit" model is failing those who protect us and turning us into a soulless machine.  Probably not okay.

Keeping the "happy subject" train rolling, some classy 22 year old went on a stabbing and shooting rampage in Isla Vista because he didn't have too much luck with the ladies.  Who would'a thunk a sociopathic, self-absorbed mini-Hitler would have trouble appealing to the opposite sex?  I thought chicks liked that stuff.

Consequently, lots of publications are running "Virgin dies after murder spree" as their headline which makes me SO HAPPY that we are coming together as a society and making this look stupid in an effort to dissuade potential copycats.  Of course, all this craziness caused Twitter to go all a'twitter with #YesAllWomen, a campaign to raise awareness about women being harassed.  Because kidnapped Nigerian girls, oil still washing up all over the Gulf Coast and all sorts of other perfectly viable causes no longer have hashtag campaigns on Twitter and are hence no longer worth worrying about.

I'm all for causes.  I am.  Call me jaded, but it gets harder and harder to think that anyone out there ACTUALLY gives a damn and/or is actually DOING anything about stuff.  Seems more like a trend.  Like snapping a selfie with a homeless person in the background and posting "Totes magotes would have given him a sandwich if I didn't already max my card at Macy's yesterday LOL #NewSkinnyJeans"

Darden sold Red Lobster to Golden Gate Capital.  So next time you're chowing down on fish that was likely raised in China beneath a suspended chicken coop (I would love to tell you that I'm making this stuff up but I'm not; your fish eat chicken poop aaaalllll day) I want you to remember that Olive Garden is not sharing in the profits you are creating.  So... yeah.  You go think about what you did.

Meb Keflezighi won the Boston Marathon, representing the first American to win since 1983.  Also nobody exploded.  So that's a step forward.

Former owner of the Clippers Don Sterling got punted for life from the NBA after saying racist comments to his girlfriend.  Did he say some pretty offensive stuff?  Buddy sure did.  Does ANYONE abstain from saying things in private that if taken to the press would likely besmirch their fine name?  Probably not.  Does that expunge him of his mistake?  Nope.  But before we start accusing the kettle it may behoove us to look at the pot in the mirror.  Because blackness.  Which is a double entendre in this context.

If you got that last joke, give yourself a high five.

Love barefoot running?  Think it's good for your feet?  Well, you're dumb and wrong (sadly I am too).  But now you can hop on board the class-action lawsuit train and sue Vibram and get a partial refund!  That should heal the cracks in your bones that will induce early-onset arthritis!  Because health care is so "affordable" now!!!

See what I did there?  I made it political.  I made dumb feety shoes somehow political.  I deserve a job as a pundit.  Because punditry is all about making entirely unrelated things somehow serve your political leaning.  And I can do that.  With feety shoes.

FHA is under heavy pressure from the National Association of Realtors to lower their mortgage insurance premiums.  This sticks them in a weird spot.  The FHA would love nothing more than to wean the American housing market off of their loans.  Simultaneously, they feel the need to keep the mortgage insurance premiums to hedge against the possibility of another wave of defaults.  But they don't want to be the "bad guys" and choke off an already shaky housing recovery.  It will be interesting to see if they bow under NAR pressure or maintain their present trajectory.

I'm starting to feel like the one paragraph of legitimate mortgage-related information that you endure once a newsletter is akin to the 10% actual meat that allows McDonalds to call their hamburgers "beef".  But there it is.  Eat up, kiddo.

After a scandal surrounding faulty ignition switches randomly turning cars into high-speed caskets on wheels, GM did a massive recall because dead people are evidently considered bad for one's corporate image.  If I were in charge I simply would have simply re-branded and tried to appeal to the daredevil/parkour crowd, as they seem pretty interested in self-destruction/mutilation.

Economic indicators coming in lately concerning business spending, industrial production, job growth and all sorts of other stuff that none of you pay attention to but definitely complain about when they're not doing good have been, well, doing good lately.  Not super good but consistently good.  And that's a good thing.  Sorta puts a big question mark over how long interest rates can remain at their presently depressed levels.  But it's been all quiet on the western front in that regard thus far.

In the meantime, home prices have been heading north.  With a decent head of steam.  Nothing overly crazy and it is definitely exposing itself to a moderate pullback once the Fed's free money policy ends.  But stock prices have told us that the value of the American market and ALL the assets under that umbrella (including real estate) have a staying power that is worth noting.  So if you're thinking about picking up a place "sometime in the next 12 months" I'd like you to realize there is a strong possibility that your dream home will be a tad more expensive when you get around to buying it.

So get off your ass is what I'm saying.

It's never too late to get back on track. I mean, just look at Lindsey Lohan!

According to Black Knight Financial Services (who are completely ready to bite your legs off and/or claim that you only dealt them a flesh-wound if you quarrel with them) about 30% of the loans written in 2013 went to borrowers with a FICO score below 720.  That's pretty indicative of the lending standards not loosening as much as they should.  And given the slowdown in refinance activity, that's not very cool of banks.  Like 'they just bogarted the doobie and told us to "turn it down" again' level of uncoolness.  Totally cramping my style and harshing my buzz.

That said, I'm noticing a lot of the old-timey loan programs creeping out from underneath the rocks which they've hid under for so many years.  Foreign Nationals?  Yup, we can finance them again.  Scores down to 580?  You betcha.  Stated income???  The god-forsaken pariah of past wrong-doings???  Sadly, yes.  Yes I can completely BS income (excuse me, state and not verify the income you are definitely making wink wink) and get an insured loan written.  Aaaaaaaamerica.  It's like someone watched The Wolf of Wall Street but stopped watching before everything went bad and said "let's do exactly that!!!!"

Tax Day is upon us, and with it I bring good tidings!  Due to a minor little eency-weency change to the Farm Bill, the IRS is now able to bare its talons and money-rape you for debts that they just couldn't quite collect from your parents.  Because just because death and taxes are the only two things in this world that are guaranteed, nobody told you which order they would come in.

The Malaysian flight 370 has…

I can't.  I just friggin' can't.  I don't care.  Despite CNN's finest efforts, I just don't give a rat's ass.  I guess I'm the only person who can admit it, but I do not in any way, shape or form care.  It was 239 people, mostly Chinese.  That many people choked to death on Big Macs this week.  Do you see 'round the clock coverage of Big Mac chokings?  Nope.

And not to be callous, but doesn't China have an over-population issue anyway?  But no, that's a mean thing to say.  Pumping so much pollution into the immediate atmosphere that it reaches California and letting cancer do the dirty work is a WAY more humane way to deal with it.  I suppose it's a step up from dumping unwanted daughters into a stream.  But not a big one.

College basketball happened.  Gators didn't win.  But they did make Final Four.  Which I suppose is enough to distract us from the withered husk of a football team that Tebow left behind.

With 2016's elections starting to peek over the horizon, Jeb Bush made the surprisingly warm comment that he viewed illegal immigration as an act of love, citing those Mexicans that saw America as the only opportunity to provide for their families.  He was promptly cast into the flaming bottomless pit of untold horrors that John Boehner keeps in his basement.  Because immigration is baaad, mmkay?  Real baaad.

Speaking of elections, the recent lackluster jobs report has set the stage for a bloodbath at Congress' mid-term elections.  The two months prior had been effectively discounted due to the lagging effects of the "polar vortex" which evidently sucked for non-Floridians.  But this last one couldn't look to Jack Frost as a scapegoat leaving Democratic lawmakers in a position of weakness.

The Affordable Care Act (or Barack Hussein Obama's devil child, depending on what circle you hail from) has officially closed the open enrollment period at the exchanges, tallying 7.1 million folks who acquired insurance via the exchanges despite massive website issues.  I look forward to watching the newly insured unwashed masses take up urban base-jumping, games of 'chicken' in bulldozers and heroin simply because they can do so knowing all of us logical people will subsidize their hospital bills.

Because that is definitely going to happen.

On the subject of things that cost smart people money, the US deficit is slowly but surely decreasing through a cooperative effort of reduced stimulus, moderate job growth and a consistent (albeit slow) economic recovery.  The worry is that if present laws are not amended then the drag created by increasing social security and medicare payments will reverse this trend and put us on the bullet train to national bankruptcy.  Which leads me to suggest enacting Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" only instead of babies we use the elderly!  Over 70?  Into the wood-chipper you go.  BOOM.  Problem solved.  And it concurrently drives down meat prices.

As if our armed forces didn't have big enough muscles, our Navy has recently introduced rail guns and lasers on its latest stealth warship which shows up on radar as a fishing vessel.  A fishing vessel that can laser beam a plane straight out of the sky for less than the cost of a bottle of water AND can fire a projectile at a target 125 miles away at 7.5 times the speed of sound using only magnets AND I just got a huge freedom boner.

King Digital, the maker of popular smartphone game Candy Crush, recently went public with one of the most impressively bad IPOs in recent history, proving that you should STOP SENDING ME INVITES TO YOUR DUMB GAMES.  Seriously.

If you haven't yet heard, all your passwords and account information have probably been compromised sometime over the past two years.  Evidently there's this bug scampering around the internet called Heartbleed and it's pretty serious.  Essentially compromised the whole damn internet over the past two years.  I would be lying if I said I had even the slightest clue as to how it works, but it basically de-crypts al the stuff you do online that really should be encrypted.  And that's bad.

So change your passwords.  And while you're at it, tell that person you know who is buying a home that this great guy Greg is super-awesome at helping with mortgages.  The two actions seem unrelated, I know.  But do them both anyways.  Don't over-think it.

Crimea? More like cry-me-a river, amirite???

Remember the Winter Olympics?  Not to imply that you watched them (I'm fairly sure no one watched anything other than curling) but do you remember when they were?  Times were simpler back then.  So peaceful.  Russia even went so far as to poke fun at themselves, intentionally recreating the 5th Olympic ring error from the opening ceremony in the closing ceremony proving that somewhere in their black, vodka-soaked hearts there was some semblance of humor.

Then they got bored.  Then they invaded the Ukraine.  In the words of Elmer Fudd, "Ooooohhhhhh dat wascally Wussia."

So of course, we Americans got all in a tizzy because Hollywood would like to get away with using Russians as villains again and this seemed as good an excuse as any to re-demonize them.  Admittedly, the cameras in the Olympic showers didn't help their case all that much.  Honestly, all of America would have rallied behind Putin's invasion if he had simply come out and said that he had "top intelligence" that "WMDs" were being held "there".  At that point he could bring down whatever level of carnage he wanted and we wouldn't' have given a rat's ass because, you know, WMDs.  Right?

DO YOU SEE HOW STUPID THAT SOUNDS WHEN IT'S SOMEONE OTHER THAN US DOING IT?!?

When you get down to brass tacks, Crimea has really been operated and possessed by Russians pretty much the whole time.  Russia docks a huge segment of their Black Sea fleet there.  The issue is that this territorial "expansion" (really just an official reacquisition of military assets) violates the Budapest Memorandum which originally helped to denuclearize the Ukraine while providing them border assurances.  And we sorta-kinda promised that we'd help maintain the integrity of Ukraine's borders in the event of situations exactly like this one which means Russia violated the treaty.

Of course, when it comes to which country has violated the most treaties, I'm pretty sure the good ol' USA still has a sizable advantage.  But still, boooooooo those guys.

So now we're going to hold some diplomatic conference with Putin and John Kerry's all over the news again and sanctions have been levied and blah blah blaaaaaaah stuff that isn't war.  Which is good.  Because war with Russia would probably suck.  But the fun thing is that LAST time we got in a Cold War with these folks, they didn't have a functioning stock market that could feel the impact.

But now they do.  Mua ha ha ha HA HA HAAAAAAAAA.  CAPITALISM, BEEOTCH!  WE GOT YOU BY THE SHORT AND CURLIES!!!  So yeah, they're probably not too interested in war either.  Regardless, if they prepare for war like they prepare for the Olympics then we've got nothing to worry about.

Also Venezuela is going through a whole crazy revolution kind of scenario, but since that has less of a direct impact on our stock markets we just kinda swept that one under the rug.  Just like the tsunami victims once it became out of vogue to donate ten dollars via text message to them.

Arizona in all their sun-stroked logic decided to try and make it okay not to serve gay people because religion and whatnot.  That didn't work out so well.  Evidently you can't just say "God told me so" and get away with abject bigotry.  Who woulda thunk it?

The Oscars happened.  That was fun.  I guess.  Brad Pitt had pizza because that's an unusual thing to do in that kind of environment.  Matthew McConaughey thanked God in his acceptance speech and the crowd went silent (but really did you expect them to go "WOOOOO!!!!  YEAH GOD!!!!  AND THAT GUY FROM DAZED AND CONFUSED WOOOO!!!!!!"?)  But most notable was the epic selfie that Ellen snapped (really it was the guy from the Hangover but whatever) of a bunch of famous people that literally crashed Twitter via re-tweets.  Really makes you feel like all those actors genuinely like each other.

Until you find out it was an 18 million dollar ad spot for Samsung's dumb new phone that isn't an iPhone!  Of all the people in the world I thought I could trust and then Ellen does this to me?  I don't know how I can go forward and face reality anymore.

So a Malaysian airplane went completely missing with two Iranians sporting illegal passports on board aaaaaand shockingly enough it doesn't look like they were terrorists.  In other news, a building exploded and collapsed in Manhattan aaaaaand shockingly enough it wasn't due to terrorism.  Despite stuff still going wrong, the whole terrorism thing seems to not be hitting us quite as often anymore.  That's pretty fun.

Go high five someone in the military.  They've earned it.

The stronger-than-expected jobs report for February gave the democrats a nice "Oh thank God/god/arbitrary luck/the-will-of-the-greater-cosmos" moment.  Since December and January's weak numbers were essentially written off due to the lasting effects of the polar vortex storm, February's numbers came under a noteworthy amount of partisan scrutiny.  Coming into the all-too-soon mid-term congressional elections, I'm sure the blue team is breathing a sigh of relief they didn't leave any blood in the water this month.

I really haven't discussed a damn thing surrounding real estate or mortgage rates in this one, have I?  Hmm.  Well, the whole Russian invasion thing does stand to throw more international money into our bonds.  That's probably good for rates.  China seems to be falling behind which also helps us.  Home prices keep moving upwards, underwriting guidelines are slowly loosening and rates remain at exceptionally low levels.

I mean, do 80% of you even really care?  And can't the other 20% just call me and get their in-depth commentary on demand?  Why yes, yes you can.

I love you.  Never change.  Also send me referrals, dammit.

I think baby 2014's diaper needs a change

We are officially 28 days into the new year.  How are those resolutions going?  Do people really even make "resolutions" anymore?  Seems to me that it's all a bunch of whiny, faux-introspective drivel on how the "challenges of the past have really molded them into a better blah blah blah no one cares."  The fact of the matter is that I hope you had a fantastic holiday season and that the year is kicking off for you in the best possible way.  If you're happy then I'm happy for you.  So let's see how the world has changed since the stone ages of 2013.

Recreational weed is legal in Colorado and Washington now.  Also Obama says it's less dangerous than alcohol.  Also the only two cities to legalize marijuana recreationally have their football teams in the Super Bowl.  Also John Morgan just collected enough signatures to get medical marijuana on the Florida ballot.

For compliance reasons, I can't exactly comment on any of the above information.  Buuuuuuuut yeah.  There it is.  Makes you go "Hm."

The dreaded tapering of QE3 is upon us.  At the last Fed meeting (and Big Ben Bernanke's last official hurrah before Janet Yellen takes his place) the powers that be opted to dial back the bond buying from $85 billion per month to $75 billion, cutting $5 bil from mortgage bonds and $5 bil from treasury purchases.  Contrary to popular belief when the event was first imagined back in April of 2013, the universe did not implode.  In fact the whole experience was well received by the markets.  The next Fed meeting is expected to yield a cut to our debt-buying appetite of equal size.  Given that emerging markets are seemingly unilaterally faltering and China's growth has been called into question, the "least of all evils" approach to investing in America seems to still be working.

Kinda like going camping and having your group encounter a bear: you don't need to outrun the bear, you simply need to outrun the other campers.

This whole taper philosophy is somewhat muddled by the pathetic recent jobs report showing a gain of 74,000 jobs versus estimates of 200k+.  It raised a series of questions from all the surprised analysts out there: was this due to an actual slowdown in job creation or an anomaly brought on by impressively bad weather?  Is the massive drop in labor force participation a function of mostly retirees or are people simply giving up the hunt for gainful employment?  Ultimately no one knows for sure.  But it throws an interesting spin on future policy changes.

Our country has been abused by a "polar vortex" this winter which has disrupted many non-Floridian lives.  Or so I hear on Facebook whilst sipping Mai Tais by the pool.  Silly northerners and their snow-blowers and I assume pet penguins.

In light of general outrage coupled with reports showing that they have close to zero effect on anti-terrorism, the NSA is getting colonoscopized by some oversight boards.  Which is a deliciously ironic twist of events.  M. Night Shyamalan level shennanigans.  That's what those sickos get for monitoring all that porn we watch.

North Korea's dear leader Kim Jong Un killed his uncle.  With dogs he starved for 5 days.  Then he put every known relative of his uncle's to death, including the ambassadors to Cuba and Malaysia and a bunch of children.  Because that's totally a normal and sane move for a country's leader to make.  Then he told his army to mobilize for war.  Then he sent angry faxes to South Korea.

Seriously, who communicates by fax anymore?  This guy needs to get with the program.

The Winter Olympics are coming up shortly in Sochi, evidently the only place in the world to have zero gay people.  The mayor of Sochi came out and said that personally which is kinda weird, because obsessively concerning yourself with what other grown men do in bed is the third gayest thing you can possibly do.

Justin Bieber reportedly had his house raided because he egged the neighbor's place.  The cops found a bunch of drugs, marking the first time in history that someone that was brought up in the music industry too young ended up having an issue with drugs.  LIGHT THE SIGNAL FIRES, ARMAGEDDON IS NIGH!!!

But wait, there's more!  Shortly thereafter he proceeded to get caught drag racing while drunk and on prescription drugs.  And that entire situation just makes me deeply sad.  Mainly because he didn't kill himself in the process before the police arrived.  Where is the justice?!?

Anywho.  Enjoy the SuperBowl.  And welcome to 2014.  And buy a home.  Because I say so.