Lee Farkas, who was chairman and majority owner of the Florida mortgage firm Taylor, Bean and Whitaker, has been granted release from prison nine years into a 30-year sentence. So reports the Orlando Sentinel.

A Loan Officer based in the South wrote: "Right now, it is a very interesting time at my bank for all MLO’s here. The minimum down payment requirements for all conventional and jumbo loans are very high. Minimum credit score requirements are very high and our interest rates are the highest in the industry, I believe. We are losing many buyers due to high rates and high down payment. I have been told the reason is because the bank is reducing their risk and is preparing for a major fallout sometime. They must know something nobody else does, as I don’t think other banks have the restrictions we have. It’s like playing a round of golf with 1/3 of a set of clubs. Let me know what you think."

PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) recently announced its first-ever Diversity & Inclusion Transparency Report. And, according to a recent Fortune article, “women and racially diverse talent now account for 65% of [PwC] entry-level hires, 7% of whom identify as Black, 12% as Latinx.”