Here are some interesting money reads you may have missed this week:

The Association For Financial Professionals reported on the details of the Treasury Department’s plans for regulatory reform.
Philip Slater’s rant against individualism on Huffington Post made me wonder how much of our current financial crisis is due to an ‘overestimation of abilities’ on Wall Street. And is this any easier to swallow that outright fraud?
CFO.com had an interesting piece on how some of Staple’s green policies are improving the bottom line – even in especially in bad times.
Anil Rao took on big business bloggers’ assessment of MBAsat Intercalm. I especially …read more

How bad have things been for the mortgage-lending industry? The business’ leading trade association reports that mortgage banking firms actually lost money in 2006 on the average mortgage loan they produced.
 
The 2007 cost study released this October by the Mortgage Bankers Association reports that mortgage-banking production profits fell to negative-$50 per loan made in 2006. Yes, that’s right, negative-$50. That’s down from a production profit of $258 per loan in 2005.
 
The biggest reason, according to the association, is that production operating expenses grew by a whopping 17 percent in 2006. It cost mortgage bankers an average of $3,416 for each …read more