“IndyMac has announced they will no longer accept any new loan submissions or rate locks in either retail or wholesale, and are closing their “forward” mortgage business.”

Citing regulatory pressure to maintain its capital levels, IndyMac is shifting away from and shutting down much of its forward mortgage origination business to focus on its Reverse Mortgage unit, Financial Freedom, according to a letter from chief executive Mike Perry posted on IndyMac’s corporate blog.

IndyMac said as of July 7 it would no longer accept any new loan submissions or rate locks in its retail and wholesale forward mortgage lending channels, except for its servicing retention channel and would cut roughly half its staff of 7,200 over the next couple of months.

The company said it plans to honor all its existing rate locked loans and continue to fund them.

“While the managers and employees in these units have worked incredibly hard, these units are not currently profitable due to the continuing erosion of the housing and mortgage markets,” Mr. Perry said. “At the same time, these operations take up significant balance sheet capacity and ‘feed’ growth in the servicing asset, an asset we need to shrink given its size relative to our existing capital.”

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE) CIT Group Inc. (NYSE: CIT), a leading global commercial finance company, announced today that it has agreed to sell its Home Lending business, consisting of $9.3 billion in assets and related servicing operations, to Lone Star Funds for $1.5 billion in cash and the assumption of $4.4 billion of outstanding debt and other related liabilities. The servicing centers, which employ approximately 300 people, are located in Marlton, NJ and Oklahoma City, OK.

In a separate transaction, CIT agreed to sell its approximately $470 million manufactured housing portfolio to Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance, Inc. for approximately $300 million. Net cash proceeds from the two transactions are expected to be approximately $1.8 billion.

In the second quarter of 2008, CIT expects to record an estimated pretax loss for the Home Lending segment of approximately $2.5 billion ($2.0 billion after tax). This loss consists of an estimated $2.2 billion loss on sale and an approximate $350 million loss from operations during the period. Home Lending will be accounted for as a discontinued operation. The sale of the portfolios is scheduled to be completed in July, while the transfer of the servicing platform will be completed by the first quarter 2009. It is expected that the company’s proforma tangible equity to managed assets ratio at June 30, 2008 will be in excess of 9%, above the company’s current 8.5% target.

It is not just Bank of America that is reeling from subprime problems, the largest banks in the world have posted $290 billion of credit losses, since the beginning of 2007.

Bank of America Net Drops 77%

NEW YORK, April 15, 2008 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) — Beleaguered investors of Washington Mutual (NYSE:WM) were delivered more bad news by the company in Tuesday’s after-hours earnings announcement. The company reported a first-quarter loss of $1.14 billion and indicated that it expects Writedowns of $12 billion to $19 billion of its $187 billion portfolio of single family residential home loans in 3 to 4 years.

Litigation on behalf of Washington Mutual employees and 401(k) plan participants has commenced against the company for alleged violations of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington. If you are an employee of Washington Mutual and wish to discuss the investigation or have questions concerning this notice or your rights, please contact Scott+Scott (scot...@scott-scott.com, (800) 404-7770, (860) 537-5537), for more information. There is no cost or fee to you.

Bear Stearns reaped a profit of $115 million or 86¢
a share before the JP Morgan takeover.

The Federal Reserve Was Ready to Make Lending Available to Other Brokers on Same Day They Helped Out Bear Stearns; Borrowers at Discount Window Included Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.

Mortgage lenders are shutting down your home equity lines of credit in order to preserve their interests and combat homeowners from over mortgaging in depreciating markets.

WAMU recently said that they wanted to, “Strengthening the Mortgage Industry” in a press release and now they need their mother’s help to go to the bathroom. So which direction are they these so called leaders really leading?

Washington Mutual began offering this ‘new’ full disclosure program to the mortgage clients delivered through mortgage professionals BUT not to the clients they receive via their retail locations. Why don’t their retail clients deserve this full disclosure?

So the reputation of WAMU appears to be tarnished at best. It has been so bad at WAMU that even powerhouse Credit Suisse Questioned the “credibility” of the Washington Mutual management.

On a very serious note, we feel bad for their stockholders, the hundreds of employees they are letting go and the millions affected by, what the world has come to know as a ‘Lack of Leadership’.

Here is their political spin in an effort to try to look good.

April 7, 2008, WaMu announced significant changes affecting our Home Loans business. As part of this announcement, and consistent with the company’s retail focused strategy, WaMu has made the very difficult decision to exit the Wholesale lending business. In order to have an orderly shut down, we have determined the following critical dates:

April 10, 2008: Last date to submit new applications or locks.

May 31, 2008: All WaMu Wholesale Sales Centers will be closed by this date.

June 13, 2008: Generally, all loans must be closed/funded by this date. We will, however, honor outstanding loan commitments with expiration dates after

June 13, 2008 up until the
expiration dates set forth in those commitments.

June 30, 2008: All WaMu Wholesale loan fulfillment centers (LFCs) [San Diego, CA; Pleasanton, CA; Downers Grove, IL; and Jacksonville, FL] will be closed by this date.

Current Pipeline:
*Locked loans with an expiration date prior to June 13, 2008 may be extended per current policy provided the loan is closed/funded by June 13, 2008.

*Effective April 8, 2008, a condition will be added to each new commitment which will supersede the normal expiration provision.

*Floating loans must generally be locked, closed/funded by June 13, 2008. Again, they may only close and funded after June 13, 2008 if a loan commitment has already been issued and the commitment
expires after June 13, 2008.

*If a loan is locked with an expiration date past June 13, 2008, it will not be honored unless a loan commitment has been issued and the commitment expires after June 13, 2008.

*We are unable to make any exceptions regarding the closed/funded date of June 13, 2008. Again, however, we will honor outstanding commitments with commitment expiration dates beyond
June 13, 2008.

WaMu will continue to originate loans through Consumer Direct and our Retail Lending channel.

Your Account Manager or Sales Manager will be available to support you while we transition out of this business.

This is a very hard day for WaMu and all of Wholesale Lending. We have appreciated your partnership and support over these many years and wish you the best as we move on to new opportunities.

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon is quadrupling the price of Bear Stearns from the price he agreed o pay just nine days ago and yet he is still managing to get kudos for the deal.

I think he made a steal. I think what will happen as five or 10 years and now when we do not remember what the Subprime Mortgage Industry is about, they will spin that off at a very significant profit.