[OESY]

Scapegoating:
Sen. Clinton & Co. would rather blame lenders
than confront the real mortgage crisis.

.

[freemike]

Also,, it has become obvious that any more calamities, problems, bumps will no longer be the fault of just Bush, but of the free market and capitalism. This is going to be the new chant. It will all be shouts for more government control, which will create more problems and will lead to further regulations until the Utopian dream is realized.

[Grut]

The problem isn't the CRA; the problem is that loan officers were eager to drive house prices unsustainably upwards because those loan officers were rated (and paid) on how much they loaned, not on the loans' quality. One of the ways they did that was to ignore the ability of the mortgagee to repay, and to write the loan with terms that misled the (admittedly) fiscally illiterate borrower into thinking he was taking on something he could handle. That'll do for 'predatory lending' as far as I'm concerned.

If someone can't keep up with a mortgage on an $85,000 house, maybe that's the CRA; but defaults on $600,000 houses aren't. Yes, there were borrowers who gamed the system; but the system was there for them to game. This business about the CRA is just an excuse.

[LomanBill]

No mention at all about how Long Beach Savings gave up its banking charter and transformed itself into Ameriquest.

 

Who forced Roland Arnall and his merry crew to do that?

 

They were rather proud of "Revolutionizing" the mortgage industry.

 

Were Ameriquest's Boiler Rooms a "myth"?

 

And then there's this:

 

Subject: Justice

To: MLee [at] innercitypress.org

From: [Name withheld]

Sent: Thu, 21 Sep 2006 1:23 AM

Dear Mr. Lee: I was previously employed by Argent Mortgage for two and a half years and managed, among other areas, the corporation's fraud investigation, borrower complaints and repurchase departments. There are currently over 568 open fraud investigations involving hundreds of brokers and hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent loans that are being covered up by top executives in the company. If a broker sustains a certain monthly volume, Argent management looks the other way and, not only does not suspend the bad brokers, but knowingly sells these fraudulent loans on the secondary market to unwitting investors.

I was terminated today and left with just my purse in tow, but I have names of individuals in the company who need to be served with subpoenas to enable them to turn over their spreadsheets and boxes full of documentation and evidence of all the fraud they have found that is being covered up by Argent Mortgage's executive management. The state regulators need to know the truth about the blind eye Argent turns to the fraud perpetrated on innocent consumers by high volume brokers. They also need to be aware that Argent knowingly bundles these fraudulent loans and sells them as mortgage-backed securities on Wall Street, thereby compromising the SEC, as well as our country's economic stability.

At a recent fraud seminar attended by hundreds of mortgage lenders in Washington D.C. a week ago, an attorney who works for Argent's retained law firm, Buchalter Nemer, stood up and told the seminar attendees that the wholesale lenders in the audience had better beware, unless their name is Argent. Argent is safe from investigation because the government got their $325 million settlement from Ameriquest and won't be looking into Argent, per the settlement agreement. I hope this isn't true because Argent Mortgage funded over $50 billion in 2005 and is gearing up to fund well over $80 billion dollars of fraudulent loans in 2007.

Did Congress force them to commit fraud?

Did Congress force them to fabricate FICO scores?

Got FICO?

 

NO SALE, Mr. Lowry.

[Gorzaloon]

"What's the difference between socially responsible loans extending the American dream to deserving people with poor credit histories and predatory lending?

Do deserving people have poor credit histories?