from Kevin Williamson at National Review, From Sub-Prime to Sub-Prime:

But Fannie Mae, the organized-crime syndicate masquerading as a quasi-governmental entity, has other ideas. Under its new and cynically misnamed “HomeReady” program, borrowers with subprime credit don’t need to show that they have enough income to qualify for the mortgage they’re after — they simply have to show that all the people residing in their household put together have enough income to qualify for that mortgage. We’re not talking just about husbands and wives here, but any group of people who happen to share a roof and a mailing address. And some non-residents can be added, too, such as your parents.

And when they go down, who is going to default? The guy who has put up 20 percent on a house that costs two times what he makes in a year, or the guy who has put up 3 percent on a house that costs 2.5 times what he, his wife, his parents, his uncle, his three spinster aunts, his son with the part-time job at Burger King, and that weird guy Bob who sometimes sleeps in the basement — all of them together — earn in a year?

All these years after the mortgage meltdown, we still don’t have sensible regulation of mortgage lending. We desperately need that. We also need to kill Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Axis of Subprime Evil. And we need to do that before the next financial crisis is upon us, not in the middle of a new financial crisis.

HKO

Dodd Frank attempts to regulate just about everything except what actually caused the financial collapse.

Tag Archives

‘Collapse Ready’ Mortgages

Recent Posts

Recent Comments