Six loan agents were playing poker in the condo clubhouse when one of them loses $500 on a single hand, clutches his chest and drops dead at the table. Showing respect for their fallen comrade, the other five agents continue the game while standing. 
Another guy looks around and asks, "So, who's gonna go tell his wife?"  
They cut the cards to decide.  One of them picks the two of clubs and has to carry the bad news. They all advise him to be discreet, be gentle, don't make a bad situation any worse.  
"Discreet? I'm the most discreet person you'll ever meet. Discretion is my middle name. Leave it to me to do it with class." 
So he goes to the dead agent's condo and knocks on the door. A woman yells from behind the door, "What do you want?" 
He yells back..."Your husband just lost $500 in a poker game and he's afraid to come home. He needs some more money." 
"Tell him to drop dead!" yells the wife.

"OK." 

Bankers don’t just need lower rates or better poker hands, they need liquidity from investors and warehouse lenders, stable home prices, and tighter/normal spreads on jumbo product.  All of these have been hard to come by, but we are seeing some light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. Jumbo spreads (which impact their prices) are still too wide, although they seemed to have reached a bottom in spite of jumbo securitization being non-existent and conduits holding them in their portfolio. Two Federal Reserve Bank presidents (Janet Yellen and Dennis Lockhart) suggested that the U.S. economy is weakening after the labor market shrank in August, which will lead to lower rates, but that the housing market shows no sign of recovery. Rates have improved, as have prices, as investors interpreted their remarks as signaling an interest-rate cut next week is a sure thing. It is pretty much agreed that there's not much to lose for the Fed in cutting rates next week, but there's potentially a lot to lose if they don't cut rates.

When the employment data was released last Friday, it became apparent that the Fed can now save face and lower rates not because the markets are bullying them into it but because it appears that the economic situation is much more dire than anyone has anticipated or even fully conceived. The lowering of interest rates to levels that will enable many borrowers to refinance at manageable rates and terms is what can help and needs to occur quickly. This morning’s Trade Deficit had no impact on any of this thinking, as it came in about as expected at roughly $59 billion.

The New York Post reported that Countrywide is putting together another multi-billion dollar bailout plan, this time with Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan instead of BofA, as the lender continues to struggle amid the global credit crunch and declines in the housing market. “Sources”, according to the Post, say that a final deal could be announced by the end of the month. "Countrywide is in desperate need of cash right now to continue funding mortgages and the credit markets are still largely closed to them," said one source familiar with the situation.