Mr. Miller: I was a mortgage banking specialist, that's still probably my major focus. But most of the mortgage banks that were independent have since failed, and so now I'm becoming more of a commercial banking analyst. But we still bring a lot of the mortgage banking experience to bear there. Right now I cover anywhere from Bank of America , Wells Fargo and PNC down to companies as small as PHH , which is a small mortgage company out of New Jersey.
TWST: So your coverage is national and not specific to any one region?
Mr. Miller: Yes.
TWST: When you look across the nation, are there any differences worth noting?
Mr. Miller: Definitely. There is definitely a difference in performances across regions, and most of them are not good. You have your West Coast, your California, Arizona and Nevada, which was probably the center of the home-building speculation, and you have Florida in the same category. Florida was more in condos than anything else. You have your Midwest, which has old-school recession problems and where you have a lot of the old industries like steel and auto really suffering. This is causing a lot of problems for banks in those areas. And then you have the Pacific Northwest. It's kind of a hangover-type thing from the California market up there, because a lot of those buyers were going up into the Pacific Northwest and buying second homes, artificially pushing up demand. Probably the best region is Texas, which is a state but a region in itself. And you also have the Northeast, which also seems to be doing relatively better than the rest of the country.
Tickers included in this excerpt: BAC, BBT, C, FITB, FNFG, GS, KEY, NCC, PHH, PNC, USB, WFC
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