Right now, the consumer residential real estate mortgage loan industry is in what some call 'The Fog of War' - a bit tough to keep your bearings and see what's happening around you, let alone see the horizion and know which way to go; it's a real mess.

What's going on is very similar to what happened after Black Friday 1998, when the last cycle abruptly stopped (and the good times subsequently started). That will happen like that again (improved products and home values and better rates) sometime during the Fall of 2009. The intensity of today's situation is child's play as compared to the 1988 EXPLOSION - when most buyer of loans were in the Savings & Loan industry ... they ALL went out of business ... if you were a mortgage banker then - (funding loans on your own warehouse line and off-selling quarterly or so as I was) ... you would have been scared to death (I WAS!! - I remember feeling trapped) and maybe had a heart attack like many people did. THAT was the end of the world, this is merely a bump in the road, an ugly one yes, but not terminal. Soon, we'll probably see several Wall Street firm get 'convicted of felonies' and going bankrupt, weaker ones being bought out for pennies, merging, etc. - that's next from my memory of historical info. I doubt we'll see the MI companies all go BK (again), they're too busy refusing to pay claims - and they seem to be better at that then they were in the past - they and the title insurers will be waving the FRAUD flag a lot!

Everybody in the industry is a victim in one way or the other these days, and all of it coming from the GREED of the past decade ... anyhow, that's how I see it this morning.