Reply #8: Youth and inexperience are one thing, but the real culprits are- [View All]

[Snarkoleptic]

The Federal Reserve...for lax monetary policy (in hopes of having the housing sector spur the economy)
Wall Street...for their greed in green-lighting a mind-bending expansion of exotic products (esp. in subprime and Alt-A)
Bond Rating Firms...who were asleep at the switch and consistently mis-rated CDO's and MBS's as 'investment grade'
Lenders...for responding to Wall Streets open floodgate by reducing underwriting standards to a cursory overview
Investors...for using the lenders easy money to play a risky game of speculation in real estate
Borrowers...many buyers lied about their income, job history, and intent to occupy the property (Lenders turned a blind eye to this as well)

Now what we're seeing is the corporate giants cornering the mortgage market.
In many cases, these are the same companies that are responsible for the foreclosure spike and liquidity crisis.
These are some major league crooks.
Countrywide...with all their bad press, it's painfully obvious they're a rotten outfit.

A couple of weeks ago as internal memo from Chase was made public.
The memo was called "Zippy Cheats and Tricks" and it was created to show employees how to 'game the system' to get Fannie Mae approvals.