Freshly squozen

"Perhaps banks should go back to giving away toasters.
Rising short-term interest rates, and the failure of long-term rates to rise with them, have caused margins at federally-insured banks and thrifts to shrink to their lowest level in 15 years, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said on Thursday.
Margins are now the lowest since the third quarter of 1990, when the U.S. economy was in recession.
Large institutions are feeling more pain because they rely more on short-term borrowings for funding, the FDIC said." http://today.reuters.com/investing/financeArticle.aspx?type=fundsNews2&storyID=URI:urn:newsml:reuters.com:20050825:MTFH08690_2005-08-25_20-11-15_N25339356:1

So the banks turn to the real estate market for a fix:

"Lenders 'will do almost anything possible to keep the mortgage factories humming,' wrote CreditSights Inc. analyst David Hendler in June. 'The catch here is that the deep-discount mortgages entice more customers today who may not be able to handle the much higher mortgage payments later.'"
http://today.reuters.com/business/newsarticle.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=nN25602097