A PRIMER ON HOW WALL STREET PULLED OFF THE GREATEST MORTGAGE INVESTMENT SWINDLE IN HISTORY WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF THE US GOVERNMENT!
Starting in 2006, Wall Street operators got the ideas of taking debt obligations, and collecting them together to sell to other investors. The mortgage lenders would take their mortgages and "bundle" them, then sell the entire bundle for a flat fee. The advantage was that the mortgage lender recovered his money in a single large lump, while the investor buying the bundled mortgages would accept their return on investment over the lifetime of the mortgages. For long-term investors such as investment banks and pension funds, this was an ideal investment so long as all the mortgages were paid on time every month. The investment looked sound as long as real-estate prices kept soaring, and nobody was taking too close a look at the individual mortgages. Because the banks and mortgage companies were passing the mortgages onto outside parties, there was little incentive to look too closely at the borrowers, while financial incentives encouraged the mortgage writers to over-inflate earnings and home values on the applications to push the deals through.
The mortgage bundlers, drunk on the instant profits falling like manna from heaven, started taking some reckless steps. Mortgage analysis companies like Clayton Holdings were reporting to the clients at the big banks that many of the so-called sub prime mortgages did not meet basic underwriting requirements, either for the private banks or for the three "F"s, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and FHA. But the mortgage bundlers blended the sub prime with prime mortgages and sold off the bundles as "Mortgage Backed Securities" or "Collateralized Debt Obligations". In other words, the mortgage bundlers knew many of the mortgages in those bundles were not going to perform well, but did not tell the investors who bought them, then invested in "derivatives", basically betting those MBS and CDOs would fail!
That the relentless looting of the public treasury to cover-up this disaster has harmed the nation is beyond doubt. Trillions that might have paid for new schools and roads and hospitals has vanished into the black hole of Wall Street, to buy up bad paper and feed it to the shredder before the public finds out that once again, as is typical of a fascist economy, the poor are made to pay for all! People without mortgages, people who have never bought a home, are all harmed by this disaster. We are all victims of the rampant and reckless greed that consumes the money addicts in the halls of power. 43 million Americans are on food Stamps, and according to Barron's Magazine(October 11, 2010), unemployment is at 22%, which is depression levels. Meanwhile, Wall Street executives will collect bonuses this year totaling 8% of all the US cash in circulation!
