The last pay phone was removed from New York City yesterday. (Heck, growing up I financed my baseball card purchases by looking for loose change in those and newspaper vending machines.) Communication is certainly always changing, and successful loan officers and managers are adept at knowing the best way to communicate with others. Communication aside, loan officers have a lot on their plates. On a micro level, every loan is a hard deal, and LOs are focused on providing the best program for their client at a competitive rate. (Today MortgagePros411’s Audrey B. and Kevin C. – both LOs – and I have, for lack of a better term, a freewheeling conversation today at 2PM ET about what is happening in the mortgage biz and what loan officers are seeing.) Senior management is working on making sure their origination staff has software to help LOs do their job, or products that LOs were too busy in the last couple years to attend training on and are now saying, “Huh? We have that product? I didn’t know that!” On a more macro level, the Federal Reserve has already done a good job of “talking up” rates, and, believe it or not, there is a little chatter out there about the Fed not having to do more! Certainly investors are eying the Fed, and the current STRATMOR blog is titled, “A Primer on the Federal Reserve and Mortgage Rates.” (Today’s podcast is available here and this week’s is sponsored by Matchbox LLC, igniting ideas for the mortgage industry. Expertise in assisting clients through transition periods with Technology, Capital Markets, and Education. Today’s features an interview with Frank Fiore, President of Matchbox LLC, on the vendor landscape in mortgage banking, team building, and the company’s technological and secondary marketing products.)