Lou Barnes

Contributor

After five years as Marketing Manager of a mountaineering clothing and equipment manufacturer and retailer (a great way to enjoy your 20s), Lou Barnes built 45-broker, two-office Spruce Real Estate in Colorado from 1978-83, spending most of his time guiding the firm through extremely high interest rates. The world of money was more fun for him than real estate, and Barnes sold Spruce and joined investment banking ranks for five years as Managing Partner of RCM Government Securities, a broker-dealer working on the early flow of mortgages to Wall Street and their related derivatives. Two of those years involved work on the heart of the savings and loan meltdown -- one of the "consultants" commuting to Texas, Arkansas and other Southwestern garden spots (fortunately, he spoke the language: his family were Okies), he was asked to figure out how deep the hole was going to be. He wrote one of the earliest accurate estimates of the ultimate cost in 1986, and was one of the first to address the necessary asset workouts. Some people thrive in a career on airplanes, and Barnes was not one of them. In 1988 the homebody began another career as a mortgage banker in Boulder, just in time to catch the terrible peak of foreclosures afflicting the greater "Oil Patch" and "Savings and Loan Belt." The firm, Boulder West, survived and thrived as a small mortgage bank -- very old-fashioned, strictly "A" paper, and based on long-term relationships with Realtors and past clients. Even with that strength, Boulder West closed in 2009, and Lou and many of his colleagues joined far-larger Premier Mortgage Group. As a marketing tool and for sanity, Lou has written a weekly column on the financial markets every Friday for 20 years.

A money mess of Gulf proportions

Commentary: U.S., Europe batting zero in stimulus strategy

Jun 11

Borrowers look like IEDs to lenders

Commentary: Fear has thinned the pool of borrowers to the point that housing cannot recover

Jun 4

Low rates won't fix economy

Commentary: Declines in mortgage, Treasury rates don't change underlying fundamentals

May 28

Global economy suffers Europe's bad break

Commentary: U.S. weathers impact better than most

May 21

Europe's struggle is U.S. gain

Commentary: 'bailouts, lifeboats and hot stoves'

May 14

Forecasting fallout in European disunion

Commentary: Economic lifeboat is too small to save all

May 7

Take comfort in global economic unrest?

Commentary: U.S. is better off than Europe

Apr 30

Read between the lines in Wall Street's script

Commentary: Financial song and dance borrows from 'The Producers'

Apr 23

Economic cheerleading is misleading

Commentary: Read between the lines of recovery hype

Apr 16

Sizing up housing's role in new economy

Commentary: A sideshow or headliner?

Apr 9

Read the fine print in job numbers

Commentary: A painful drop in our standard of living

Apr 2

What happens when Fed pulls the plug

Commentary: Caught in a 'slow-motion landslide'

Mar 26

The bad news economy

Commentary: No cheer in jobs, housing outlook

Mar 19

Credit starvation fallout

Commentary: Counting the (mortgage) seconds

Mar 12

The hunt for wizards and vampires

Commentary: Shine a light on miscreants, even if it burns

Mar 5

Bye-bye equity

Commentary: Underwater homes snag economy

Feb 26

Fed acts for appearance's sake

Commentary: Discount-rate hike calms inflation hawks without actual tightening

Feb 19

'Wait and see' crisis management

Commentary: Fannie, Freddie purchases will buy time for mortgatge rates

Feb 12

The debt is a real threat

Commentary: U.S. to join 'Club Med'?

Feb 5

More power to the Fed

Commentary: Shelve those conspiracy theories

Jan 29

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