When I arrived at an automobile dealership to pick up my car, I was told the keys had been locked in it. I went to the service department and found a mechanic working feverishly to unlock the driver's side door. As I watched from the passenger side, I instinctively tried the door handle and discovered that it was unlocked. "Hey," I announced to the technician, "It's open!!!"   His reply, "I know. I already got that side."

Don’t shoot the messenger! Per Wholesale Access, a Maryland-based research firm, over 100,000 loan reps who work for mortgage brokers are likely to lose their jobs and 18,000 brokerage firms will probably shut down by the middle of next year. (Their website is http://www.wholesaleaccess.com/ and the author of the study, which you can buy for $30,000, is Tom LaMalfa.) Please keep in mind that NL Inc. is very interested in adding good retail agents in different states – please call Donny Isaak or George Moody at 925-295-9326 if you know anyone.

There appears to be a trend of having REO’s be sold by real estate agents on behalf of banks. And buyers are finding that going the REO route has fewer pitfalls than other methods of buying a foreclosed house. With an REO, "there are no title problems, no liens, no clouds," says Todd Beitler, co-author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to Foreclosures and president of the Real Estate Library, an online resource on foreclosed properties. "The homeowner has been removed, so you don't have to evict anyone. It's all free and clear." In the past, real estate speculators tended to buy foreclosed properties at auction. But these days the pros are sitting on the sidelines, either because they're tapped out or think home prices will continue to fall. The full story can be found at: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/07_38/b4050083.htm?campaign_idnws_insdr_sep7&link_positionlink2

Friday we had a fair amount of economic news with Retail Sales +0.3%, the Current Account Balance for the second quarter at -$190.8 billion, Import Prices were -0.3% and Export prices were +0.2% in August, and Industrial Production +0.2% & Utilization stands at 82.2%. Today we find the yield on the 10-yr up to 4.49% ahead of tomorrow's much anticipated FOMC meeting.  The market expects the Fed to cut the official funds target rate by at least 25 basis points (the first since June 2003): the futures market is trading at a 100% likelihood of a 25 bp cut but only a 10% likelihood of a 50 basis point cut. Their meeting adjourns at 11:15AM tomorrow. Already out this morning is the Empire Manufacturing report, which dropped to 14.7 from 25.1 last month. Tomorrow morning we have the release of August’s Producer Price Index (PPI), giving us a very important measurement of inflationary pressures at the producer level of the economy. Analysts are currently calling for a 0.1% decline in the overall index, and a rise of 0.1% in the core data. Wednesday we have the Consumer Price Index (CPI), a key measure of inflation at the consumer level of the economy, and also Housing Starts. And on Thursday we’ll have the Conference Board’s Leading Economic Indicators, expected to be unchanged.