Subprime Hall of Slime

[flashl]

WHERE CREDIT'S DUE

Villains in the Mortgage Mess? Start at Wall Street. Keep Going.

By Kathleen Day

Yes, the executives at Countrywide Financial Corp. planned a top-dollar shindig at a ski resort earlier this year, just after the bank's multibillion dollar losses on subprime mortgages required a shotgun marriage to Bank of America. (A Wall Street Journal story forced them to cancel the party.) And sure, Bear Stearns chief executive James E. Cayne was off playing golf last summer as two of his investment bank's hedge funds collapsed under gargantuan subprime losses. (He's been dumped.)

But so far, the current mortgage meltdown hasn't featured the crasser displays of the 1980s savings and loan fiasco, when executives partied hearty -- one banker famously dressed up as a king and served lion meat to his guests -- as they created a mortgage industry mess that cost taxpayers more than $500 billion.

As a reporter for this newspaper, I covered the savings and loan debacle in depth and later wrote a book about it. Watching the current crisis unfold, I see much of the same behavior that led to the "S&L Hell" of two decades ago. Indeed, some of the fixes for the last problem led directly to this one. Once again, too many people had access to other people's money with too little oversight. Once again, the White House, Congress and federal bank regulators failed to police the financial services industry because they mistook deregulation for a system without any reasonable rules. And now as then, our saga is chock-a-block with people and institutions deserving special mention in the Suprime Hall of Slime.

But make no mistake: Today's crisis dwarfs the S&L fiasco. The eventual cost to taxpayers of this scandal is likely to make yesteryear's culprits look like pikers.

Washington Post

[annabanana]

1. A picture for the Lobby:

[Double T]

3. ANOTHER scumbag rethug corrupt clone.

Please keep the rethugs away from the test tubes; things like THIS might NOT happen.

[Double T]

2. bushes HEAVILY involved THEN, bushes HEAVILY involved NOW.

NEVER FORGET AGAIN!!

[bronxiteforever]

4. Great article-clear, concise and painful to read

k & r

[DemReadingDU]

5. More from the WaPo article

Wall Street sold subprime everywhere: to public and private pension funds, foreign governments and financial conglomerates, even fishing villages in the Arctic Circle.
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Meanwhile, the Bush administration, which has repeatedly balked at the idea of any government help for borrowers facing foreclosure, has let the Fed underwrite a $30 billion bailout of Bear Stearns and extend an open-ended line of credit to the other investment banks that created the subprime bubble. Among the collateral it said it would accept are . . . private-label mortgage-backed securities.

Yes, we taxpayers now own this stuff.




Edit: I like your thread title - Subprime Hall of Slime