Homeland Defense, The MSST, and Me

First of all I have to personally thank Lieutenant Commander Thomas, Commanding Officer, of the Coast Guard and his fine staff for showing us a wonderful time this Saturday. These guys are not just the Coast Guard, they are part of the counter terrorism unit. They are the sharp, pointy end of what the coast guard does. They took great care in showing us what they do, and how they do it.

The highlight for me was our boat ride out past the Golden Gate.
The boats they took us on are extremely fast and maneuverable!
How fast?
Imagine doing 50 on the freeway and (without hitting the brakes), do a 180 turn, using only your lane and the lane next to you.

That's fast!
That's maneuverable!

I've been on quick boats before, Jet Boats, Ski Boats, and the like.
Nothing compares to what these things do.


These people do some fine things on a day to day basis. They had some interesting questions for us, and I hope we were able to point them in the right direction.

I had an absolutely fabulous day, and it was well worth missing the Big Game for.
Thanks you!



On to Mortgage News:

Looking ahead, this week doesn't have as much economic news as last week, but the complete calendar is shown below.

The numbers to watch out for are Factory Orders, 3rd Quarter Productivity, Non Manufacturing ISM, and Friday's unemployment data.

What can you expect from mortgage prices today? We're roughly unchanged to slightly-worse on A-paper 30-yr prices versus Friday afternoon, but some investors may improve nonetheless if they were conservative on Friday.

Date	ET	Release	For	Actual	Briefing.com	Consensus	Prior	Revised From
Dec 05	08:30	Productivity-Rev.	Q3		0.6%	0.5%	0.0%
Dec 05	10:00	Factory Orders	Oct		-4.2%	-3.7%	2.1%
Dec 05	10:00	ISM Services	Nov		55.0	56.0	57.1
Dec 06	10:30	Crude Inventories	12/01		NA	NA	-360K
Dec 07	08:30	Initial Claims	12/02		320K	320K	357K
Dec 07	15:00	Consumer Credit	Oct		$9.0B	$4.5B	-$1.2B
Dec 08	08:30	Nonfarm Payrolls	Nov		115K	115K	92K
Dec 08	08:30	Unemployment Rate	Nov		4.4%	4.5%	4.4%
Dec 08	08:30	Hourly Earnings	Nov		0.3%	0.3%	0.4%
Dec 08	08:30	Average Workweek	Nov		33.9	33.9	33.9
Dec 08	10:00	Mich Sentiment-Prel.	Dec		91.0	92.5	92.1