Diane Gerdes's (dianegerdes) Blog

Our great country's legislators peaked over their Ivory Towers long enough to embrace President Obama's one-size-fits-all foreclosure prevention loan modification and refinance program.  Again, it was not a mandate, but a series of suggestions with guidelines and incentives for both servicers and...

Hi! My name is the Bank of America and I am addicted to performance enhancing euphoria that includes huge profits and big pay days.  Across our great country the banks, as well as other financial institutions such as Fannie Mae, started using back in 2003 and could not stop.  Tired of being the b...

President Obama threw the Global Economy a life raft this week by signing the 780 billion dollar Stimulus Program on Tuesday; and on Wednesday introduced the Foreclosure Prevention Program. The Stimulus Package's main agenda is to provide jobs and execute tax cuts to put money in our pockets.  In...

President Obama’s sheriff’s badge was tarnished this week with a double whammy: the poor reception of his significantly altered stimulus bill, and Secretary of Treasury Geithner’s murky presentation of the financial bailout proposal. The rowdy democrats and the suddenly prim republicans were at o...

The media hounds of the Senate and House of Representatives are busy posturing for recognition on the still un-passed stimulus bill. Rather than taking action, they are focusing on seeing their names and faces scrolling across CNN and other news channels. The new bill should be called “101 Blowha...

  We all came to the imaginary money pyramid build around 2004 by the extreme profit seekers on Wall Street.   The architects with names like Bernard Madoff , John Thain and  Hank Paulson may have learned from Charles Ponzi.  In the 1920's Charles Ponzi invested unsuspecting individual's hard ear...

Now that I have got your attention, you may have heard that there have been some changes in the mortgage industry. Now, it is all about educating our clients that our world has gone through an extreme make-over.   Guidelines have changed. In addition to the new updates, banks have modified the gu...

Did you receive an end of the year bonus? Nope, neither did we. But John Thain, the former CEO of the once mighty Merrill Lynch orchestrated a pay-out of 4 billion dollars in bonuses December 29th , three days before the finalized shotgun marriage with Bank of America. Barely three weeks, into th...

   How does the U. S. economy compare to the Arizona Cardinals?  Our team, (yes, just like "our country" they are "our team") is the oldest team in professional American football founded in 1898 and like a lot of snowbirds, their original home was in Chicago.   Less than two years ago the Cardina...

“Old acquaintances be forgotten and never brought to mind” 2008 would be the year most of us would like to forget. Of all the gifts we could return to Sears, or in this case Uncle Sam, it would be the Economy of 2008. Keep it, we do not want it. 2009, on the other hand, is filled with promise and...