Rarely is a movie sequel better than the original. I feared that HARP II (Home Affordable Refinance Program) would be another empty “cotton candy” promise from Washington with a lot of fluff and no substance.

When our automobile needs a tune-up, it provides us with plenty of clues: hard to start, rough running, poor gas mileage, etc. But when a mortgage needs a tune-up it gives no warning.

Last week my neighborhood got about a foot of snow. While running around doing last minute Christmas shopping, I noticed the wiser, more experienced drivers took a slow steady pace and went forward with a minimum of frustration.

Unfortunately, some of the terms in the mortgage industry are not applied uniformly. My favorite example concerns a mortgage that supposedly has no closing costs.

A friend of mine was on a business panel and he was asked the question, “As an employer, what is the number one characteristic you look for when hiring someone?”

Most of the time, the sequel to a movie is never as good as the original. Recently the federal government announced that it was reviving the Home Ownership Refinancing Program (HARP) allowing homeowners who owe more their home is worth to refinance.

If you read my column from last week, you would know that I was talking about how hard it is right now to find a good fix and flip home.

The Ratchet Effect is one of the few economic theories that has any relation to reality. As President Harry Truman succinctly observed, if you laid every economist end to end, they would point in every direction, and only be able to explain things after they have happened.

Freddie Mac reported last week that the average on the 30-year fixed mortgage rose sharply from 3.94% to 4.12%, which according to the National Bureau of Economic Research was the lowest rate ever.

In many areas of life today, the only constant is change. This is especially true in the mortgage industry. Nothing like moving the goal posts during a game to keep make things exciting.