People always say that hindsight is twenty-twenty but that gives the present moment too much credit. In fact, hindsight is usually just as myopic and cloudy as foresight or, well, uhm, just plain sight. Take the mortgage meltdown. Already it’s started to slip the minds of many just how loose things got in the hey day of the mortgage market.
No doc. Low doc. Stated income. All those commercials assuring us that bad credit shouldn’t stand in the way of the American dream, which apparently involved taking on massive amounts of debt to own a home in Florida or the suburbs of Las Vegas. We remember the words, the catch phrases, the scenes of happy couples in their new home. But it’s started to fade, hasn’t it?
Well, in the interest in memory preservation, we’ve decided to bring you the twenty-first issue of the twenty-seventh volume of National Mortgage News. On Monday, February 17, 2004, the National Mortgage News informed its readers that Angelo Mozilo wanted to eliminate downpayments on mortgages. Actually contributing equity to purchase a home is “nonsense,” Mozilo tells the News. He decries credit score requirements as too high.
“The only way we can have a better society,” Mozillo says, “is to make sure those who don’t have a house have the opportunity to get one.”
Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the better society.
Mozilo: End Downpayment Requirement [National Mortgage News; pdf]
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How We Got Here: Downpayments Were Nonsense, And Credit Scores Stood In The Way Of A Better Society
By Bess LevinComments (11)
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Mozilo spouting socialist rhetoric to help line his own pockets. Privatize the profits and socialize the costs. Well done tan man. Your prison jumpsuit will match your tan nicely.
He should have retired in 2006 as he planned…
note the “Open Forum” item in the upper right noting that the “Housing Bubble Is Hot Air.”
God I wish I could run 1 of these mortgage companies so I could say what we all think/know:
1. Yes, I do discriminate…against assholes who don’t pay their bills.
2. Just because you are an American doesn’t mean you DESERVE a home.
The idiot public needs to learn that the more convoluted a deal, the more they are getting hammered. Structuring a complicated deal with as many variables as possible before wrapping it up into a tidy package and giving it a 3 syllable name is what puts food on most of our tables and fuel in our 911′s. Dipshit public needs to recognize or start taking their whippings with a smile.
Back to BSC bathroom jokes.
Keep in mind the typical mortgage broker’s office was stocked with DH Blair wannabes.
Gratuitous Rush reference… Cue Geddy Lee…
We can go from boom to bust
From dreams to a bowl of dust
We can fall from rockets’ red glare
Down to “Brother can you spare…”
make sure those who don’t have a house have the opportunity to get one
Even if it takes making them into a bad investment.
Isn’t this epidemic of W’s “ownership society?”
Nobody asked the banks/brokers to binge on low quality debt. Now that they’re all pukeing it back up, who cares?
PS to Not – Home ownership in the US has been a policy goal of the Congress/Senate for a very, very long time. Guys like CFC just democratized the availability of debt.
The UK has had 100% mortgages for decades, without disaster.
That said, we have FHA, which allows worthy borrowers 97% mortgages. Slipping a few more $100,000,000 into Mozillo’s pockets while CFC goes the way of ENE.
This kind of bull from the CEO of the largest mortgage underwriter in the country, shows why the housing is in such dire straits. CFC should go bankrupt. More importantly, Mozilo should go bankrupt for his own mistakes that have caused this meltdown.
He should vacate the corner office at CFC. NOW.