
Originally Posted by
Hinny
Gave them the opportunity but it was the valuation of assets that really led to the crisis.
Having to value stuff at what amounted to fire sale values was the problem. It became cyclical and self perpetuating.
You are correct. Clinton loosened the availability of creditors to lend. They chose risky people to lend to. The Bush administration has pushed deregulating the finance industry for the past eight years. Now, the chicken has come to roost, so to speak.
When getting a refinance for a mortgage, the money was lent on the basis of "the market has been going up X percentage in the last X years" so you'd get an assessed value of that amount, not what the house next door sold for last week. No assessor came to look at your house, it was all a paperwork shuffle. As it turns out, I had mortgages with WAMU (sold quickly to Freddie Mac), which just was declared insolvent by the FDIC and taken over by JP Morgan. They were huge proponents of sub-prime mortgages.
I had a house which sold for double the price I bought it at three years earlier. We only sold because we moved back here. I was very lucky, but I haven't always been. I had a house I bought in the late '80's which sold for exactly the same price ten years later. Shit happens.
Ride, eat, sleep, repeat!
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