Whom to blame for the RE bust(by raven et al)

Inmy opinion the RE broker is the lowest form of life on this planet. Ifthey told a home buyer to "buy the house regradless of what loan youhave to get because it can only go up in price", what did they have tolose? They would get their commission regardless of what happened tothe buyer. The second chief culprit is the buyer themselves.They "knew" that property values could not go down, so why not buy allthat they could? After all, if your income is $20,000/year and you wereable to qualify for a neg-amort loan why not take it, if you werecertain that values were guaranteed to go up 25%/year?
RE: Agreed - greedy brokers, greedy buyers	Black Bear	NEW 11/17/2007 3:02:49 PM
....Are at the root of the problem.
RE: But lenders enabled it	Black Bear	NEW 11/17/2007 3:04:37 PM
....withtheir fancy sub-prime, no doc qualifying 102% LTV products... Withoutthe fuel, the loans, the greedy brokers and the greedy buyers could nothave closed on the purchases, and the real estate boom could not haveoccurred. So it is all of them, buyers, brokers, lenders who are responsible.
RE: Get real Raven	drgah	NEW 11/17/2007 3:15:51 PM
Withoutthe endless source of funds available to anyone who could fog a mirror,this RE bubble would not have happened. Wallstreet banks thought theyhad found the perfect product with their securitization apparatus. Thebankers were the ones offering the mortgage brokers a $5-10K bonus atthe front end for steering people into subprime option ARM's. And why?Because any interest payments deferred ended up as a profit on thebank's balance sheet for that quarter. And I also blame the ratingsagencies that rated this crap as AAA. There was tremendous conflict ofinterest in the way they constructed and rated those CDO's etc. Blamingthe mortgage brokers and RE agents for the banking industry's majorf$ck-up is shifting the blame away from the real culprits. The bankers,the appraisers, the ratings agencies, and the regulators are to blamefor this mess. Bottom line, they created RE nirvana for a fewyears by upping the DTI to the mid 50's and doing away with anysemblance of sound underwriting. Then within a 6 month time frame thisyear, they revert back to the old underwriting standards. Quite a shockto the system. And we all will pay the price for the banking industrieshubris. They aren't called banksters for nothing. If I loanout money to anyone, it is MY responsibility to make sure they arecreditworthy and have a chance of paying it back. If I make a mistakeand they don't pay it back, that should be money out of my pocket, notthe taxpayers.
RE: It's...it's....it's....	Thomas	NEW 11/17/2007 3:12:01 PM
The wives!
RE: It's...it's....it's....	LB Bear	NEW 11/17/2007 3:32:20 PM
Thomas that Wive's Video was great!!! LOL!!! Thanks!!!
RE: put the blame where it belongs	skeptick	NEW 11/17/2007 3:23:18 PM
Atotally moot point. EACH AND EVERY player in the entire exercise liedtheir asses off. RE brokers, loan brokers, the ratings agencies, DavidLereah, buyers filling out loans stating they would owner-occupy, thatthey had income higher than they did. The securities firms thatpackaged this dung as investment grade. All. Every one. I,however, believe that Greenspan is the single source of the entireissue, having dropped rates far below the natural rate of inflation andheld them there as long as he did. I consider him and him alone "mostat fault". The ratings agencies, without whose nonsense thesesecurities could NEVER have been sold as widely as they were, aresecondarily at fault. Everyone else is just a garden variety liar.
RE: put the blame where it belongs	LB Bear	NEW 11/17/2007 3:42:54 PM
Yes,please do!! After the DOT COM Bust of 2000 & the 911 shock to theeconomy the US needed a new bubble to reflate the economy... The TPTBchoose real estate.... Look back at the Bush & Greenspan speechesfrom those days.. It was a neccessary evil to kick the can or theproblems down the road for a few more years.. All the political andWall Street Hacks were in on the game....Believe me...There is plentyof balme to go round...Just thinks of the 100's of billions of dollarspaid on the real estate related incomes in taxes to the US Treasuryduring the go go days. They wanted this game to continue till Pres.second term was over in Jan. 2009.....They cam up short a few years...