Interest Rate Hike Tomorrow?

I run a mortgage brokerage (The housing bust was the banks' fault for creating those stupid-ass loans and the government's for forcing us all to make them, so back off with your shots at the little guys. That's not what this is about).

Anyway, I got a pretty panicked call from one of my investors, a large West Coast wholesale lender, about an hour ago imploring me to lock all of my loans immediately because they anticipate a "significant rate hike" tomorrow, and when I asked if it was tied to the recent Cyprus unpleasantness, my account manager said he thinks so, but nobody told him exactly why.

My question is: Bernanke has said, on many occasions, he has no plans to raise rates anytime soon, and as we have seen mentioned, ad nauseum, for at least a couple years, to raise rates right now would be shooting our economy in the head. Did Cyprus change the game? I just can't see the Fed raising rates right now. Could this mess rock the market so much that rates float up on their own?

I'm about as panicked as I can be, after 5 years of watching this stuff every day, which is not very panicked given all the false starts, about the possibilities of Cyprus kicking off the derivative bomb we've all been looking for, but I have a hard time seeing our domestic interest rates going up much anytime soon.

What do y'all think?

Last Edited by Revbo™ on 03/19/2013 04:12 PM