Root Causes
Here’s the written testimony of Eric Kolchinsky before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations last week who, during the majority of 2007, was the Managing Director in charge of the business line which rated sub-prime backed CDOs at Moody’s Investors Service.
Confirming what most analysts knew, both before and after 2007, a Senate panel investigating the causes of the nation’s financial crisis on Thursday unveiled evidence that credit-ratings agencies knowingly gave inflated ratings to complex deals backed by shaky U.S. mortgages in exchange for lucrative fees.
In an article titled “They Gave Your Mortgage To A Less-Qualified Minority” we see the effect of Clinton-era changes. Did these changes set the stage for the subprime crisis? You be the judge, but the system was abused, and went well beyond minorities. “Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001.
Just when we thought subprime could not get uglier, one of the world’s largest banks has found a way to usurp U.S. government regulations. High-Rate, High-Fee Loans HOEPA/Section 32 Mortgages and how to get around the regulation seems to be the newest and latest marketing ploy.