I’m sure you know the allegory about the camel’s nose under the tent, right? First it’s the nose, then it’s the humps. A camel takes up a lot of room. They’re smelly, they make an appalling din and while they may be useful in…
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/ Administrative Law, Finance & Banking, Taxation
As I read through my last commentary on the future of the GSEs and fielded some comments from readers, I realized I glossed over hard questions about how the governmental backstop would work, sort of like envisioning a plane and…
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/ Finance & Banking, Real Estate - Commercial, Securities Law
I am joining the hordes occupying the chatter-sphere to opine about what the GSEs should look like, post conservatorship. Having reviewed loads of opinions about the future of the Twins, I’m pretty sure the bar on looking…
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/ Finance & Banking, Real Estate - Commercial, Securities Law
I think about AI off and on in a desultory sort of way. I wonder about its threats and promises; a sci-fi dystopia of the Industrial Revolution 2.0. One thing I share with our most recent wannabe president, Ms. Harris, I, too,…
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/ Law Practice Products & Services, Science, Computers, & Technology
With the zoftig and still mutitative Big, Beautiful Bill stumbling through an unseemly Congressional favor-trading lollapalooza, one is reminded of Ms. Pelosi’s famous quip, “We’ve got to pass this bill to know what’s in it.”…
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/ Administrative Law, Elections & Politics, Zoning, Planning & Land Use
Those Bond villains got it so wrong. All the time and energy they spent trying to control the world through complex and nefarious schemes involving laser beams, atom bombs, Fort Knox gold, exploding satellites and whatever the…
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/ Elections & Politics, Finance & Banking, Taxation
It’s been a tough couple of months in the henhouse. My domesticated fowl friends and I are in a foul mood. (We’ll use “them” here, albeit I think I have a pretty good idea of how to distinguish the hims from the hers, but my…
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/ Agriculture, Elections & Politics, Labor & Employment Law
Mr. Pulte is now the great poohbah of Fannie and Freddie supervising the Twins from his seat at FHFA and also now acting as chair of their respective boards. What is he going to do (assuming he has any agency here)?…
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/ Finance & Banking, Real Estate - Commercial, Real Estate - Residential
Have you noticed the explosion of adjectival (and adverbial) usage? President Trump, perhaps our Adjectiver-in-Chief, never says someone is doing his job, it’s always a fantastic job. No one in the White House is ever in…
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/ Communications & Media Law, Elections & Politics
I just finished a book by Richard Overy called The Twilight Years analyzing the dying throes of the exceptionalism of the British Empire (American clerisy, please take note). There was a fascinating discussion about the peace…
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/ Elections & Politics
The political adventure in self-abuse that we call an election is now well behind us. I planned to write this commentary last November, hence the “Just” in the title. My inability to even assay an answer to that question which…
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/ Elections & Politics, Finance & Banking, Real Estate - Commercial
As regular readers of CrunchedCredit will know, I recently pitched the idea of amending our hoary old REMIC statute to allow additions of collateral after the startup date window to allow modification to performing loans (and to…
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/ Finance & Banking, Real Estate - Commercial, Securities Law
This title may be a bit ambitious, a triumphalist embrace of hope over experience? But it’s time for the effort to be made…
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/ Finance & Banking, Real Estate - Commercial, Taxation
Last week I talked about the Grand Bargain to fix our business. If we’re fixing to fix our business now, we’ve got to talk REMIC. The Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduit (REMIC) created as part of the Tax Reform Act of…
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/ Finance & Banking, Real Estate - Commercial, Taxation
Let me begin with an apology for not being in print for a while. All that Ho-ho-ho-ing and a lot of mulling over this particular commentary is to blame. Today, with writer’s block behind me, this commentary is about…
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/ Finance & Banking, Insurance, Securities Law, Real Estate - Commercial
