Making Sense Of Today's Market

When speaking with clients lately, it has been made clear to me that the current state of the mortgage marketplace has affected everyone on very different levels. Some people are clearly touched by the panic and have several questions about "what does this mean to me?", while others seem oblivious that this 'credit crunch' thing has anything to do with them now or in the future. More power to them. A panic state - when widespread - is a breeding ground for irrational individual behavior.

The financial talking heads in the media have a few challenges in getting rational information through to the public. For one, many of the faces on the news channels don't always follow it themselves. But when they surround themselves with economists and analysts who do get it, they need to make sure they speak in parlance that the general public can handle. CDOs, RMBS, ISM, and BBB- are not terms that reside within the daily vocabulary of people with professions outside of the financial arena.

To that concern, here are two articles that offer a broken-down explanation of what is going on right now in the mortgage market, why 'the subprime meltdown' affects other areas of borrowing money, the role of the Federal Reserve, etc. You can access them here and here.