I am no finance expert, but I was explaining to my wife how this mortgage meltdown occurred and I thought a few others might be interested. I bought my first home in 1969. It was in South Pasadena and I paid $35,000 for it, with a $3500 down payment and a $3500 second trust deed taken back by the seller who had already moved into a new home and was motivated. Thus, I paid 20% down and Home Savings and Loan took the mortgage at 6% interest. For the next four years, I paid $204 per month on my mortgage and $35 per month to the second trust deed holder until I paid the second off two years later. In those days, Savings and Loan institutions, like the one in “It’s a Wonderful Life,” took in deposits at 4% interest paid and loaned money at 6% to home buyers. They kept their own loans in-house and collected the payments as their income. Like the S&L in the movie, they had borrowed “short” and loaned “long” so they were susceptible to runs.
The Savings and Loan debacle of the 1980s ended that era. A summary by someone who knows a lot more about this than I do is here. That, however, does not explain the mortgage mess.
The S&Ls were destroyed by inflation in the 1970s and 80s. By 1979, interest rates on houses were as high as 21% and savers had abandoned the S&Ls to invest in trust deeds (as I did) or in high interest bonds. I had US Treasury bonds that carried a coupon rate of 16% and, when bought at a discount, carried an interest rate of 18%. That was US Treasury paper ! The S&Ls depositors fled to higher yields and the action by Congress in freeing the interest rates they could pay was too late. Worse, it raised the total deposit cap that was insured by the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, or FSLIC, to $100,000 from $20,000. There was no reason to do that and it was not debated. It was just added by the House Banking Committee chairman, Fernand St Germain. The result was the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s. After that, a new model was necessary for home loans. It was not an improvement.
As I explained the current mortgage process this morning, I tried to use simple examples for clarity. In my example of the 1969 purchase of my first home, the mortgage company serviced the loan, collecting my payments. It was in their interest to verify my creditworthiness as, if I defaulted, they would have to foreclose and take possession of my house. In the 1960s, houses kept their value but, in 1973 when I sold that house after moving to Orange County, I sold it for what I had paid. There was no appreciation. Considering that I had made improvements, I lost money. Why I didn’t keep it and rent it to someone else is another story? I should have but I was starting a new medical practice and didn’t want to manage a rental property 60 miles away. That was a bad decision as it was sold for $595,000 15 years later.
When I bought my house in 1991, the one I still own, the loan was handled by a mortgage broker. This was an innovation since 1969 and was at the root of the present crisis. Loans were no longer carried by the origination lender but were quickly sold to other investors. The broker made his money from the origination fees and the “points” paid by the borrower. This was just as true of banks, like Washington Mutual, as brokers. I refinanced my house a couple of years ago and made payments to WaMu for about six months. Then I received a notice that the loan was now owned by Wells Fargo. This resale market for mortgages had one bad feature and one good one. The bad feature was that the originating lender did not have to live with the decision to loan me money forever. Once they sold the loan, the problems that arose in the future, if any, were not their problems.
The good feature, and the bad, were a result of the Federal National Mortgage Association, Fannie Mae, and its sister organization, Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, Freddie Mac, which buy residential mortgages from banks and brokers. They have criteria for those loans, and those that meet them are called “conforming.” Because Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been perceived as guaranteed by the government, the interest rates were lower for conforming loans.
The resulting mess is a consequence of moral hazard. The classic example of moral hazard is in insurance where the existence of insurance may cause the insured to behave in a less careful manner. That is exactly what happened here. If the lender was loaning his own, or his company’s, money, he had an awareness of the risk of default and an interest in minimizing that risk. The result was good judgment in lending. Once that risk was reduced or removed, by selling the mortgage to someone else, it became the problem of the buyer to assess risk. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were responsible for the risk in the loans they bought.
Then another factor entered the equation, the Congressional mandate. Congress, and especially the Democratic party, decided that lending standards were too restrictive toward minorities and the poor.
The Clinton administration has turned the Community Reinvestment Act, a once-obscure and lightly enforced banking regulation law, into one of the most powerful mandates shaping American cities—and, as Senate Banking Committee chairman Phil Gramm memorably put it, a vast extortion scheme against the nation’s banks. Under its provisions, U.S. banks have committed nearly $1 trillion for inner-city and low-income mortgages and real estate development projects, most of it funneled through a nationwide network of left-wing community groups, intent, in some cases, on teaching their low-income clients that the financial system is their enemy and, implicitly, that government, rather than their own striving, is the key to their well-being.
That was the lead paragraph from the article, in 2000. This was all predictable. Moral hazard plus Congressional mandates. If I were a Democrat, I might say that the Congress was in Republican hands from 2000 to 2006. Very true. There is blame enough for both parties. Real estate developers and construction interests loved the new rules. They tend to be Republican. There were a few who tried to stem the tide.
From David Frum today:
By JOHN D. MCKINNON The Wall Street Journal; July 12, 2008; Page A8
WASHINGTON — Peter Wallison saw Fannie Mae’s troubles coming 25 years ago.
In the early 1980s, he was a top official in the Reagan Treasury Department. And Fannie Mae, at least by some measures, was insolvent, thanks to the economic storms that were then roaring through the savings-and-loan industry.
But getting anyone to do anything about the congressionally chartered mortgage company and its unusual vulnerabilities proved futile, even after Mr. Wallison began writing books warning that it and sister company Freddie Mac could take advantage of their government ties and relative lack of regulation to grow too large.
Fannie and Freddie applied pressure to try to silence Peter.
Almost immediately, he said, he experienced political pressure of the sort that—until now—has made Fannie Mae largely invulnerable to new legislative oversight and left it under the supervision of a weak financial regulator.
At the time, he sat on the board of a mortgage-insurance company that did extensive business with Fannie Mae. When the company’s officials noticed that they weren’t being chosen to insure some mortgage pools, Fannie officials told them it was because of Mr. Wallison’s new project at AEI, he said.
John McCain tried pass legislation.
For a decade reformers have tried to persuade Congress that they were allowing a serious risk to the government’s credit to develop in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but few lawmakers would take action.
One of the reasons for this was the extraordinary power of Fannie and Freddie. They not only spent close to $150 million in lobbying over the last decade, but they also got their constituents—the securities industry, the homebuilders and the realtors—all powerful industries that depend on Fannie and Freddie’s largesse—to support their sole legislative objective: the defeat of any attempt to control their growth. Congress, as usual knuckled under to the special interest.
However, a very small number of lawmakers saw this problem for what it was, and were willing to stand up to the power of Fannie and Freddie—and I am proud to say that John McCain was one of them. In 2005, he joined a small group of Republican Senators to cosponsor the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act, the strongest legislation introduced up to that time to control Fannie and Freddie. In a statement, he noted that “For years I have been concerned about the regulatory structure that governs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac…and the sheer magnitude of these companies and the role they play in the housing market…If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie and Freddie pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole.”
These were prophetic words, given what we know now, but they did not spring from a sudden conversion in that year. Three years earlier, McCain had introduced legislation—co-sponsored with the House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt—to create a Corporate Subsidy Reform Commission. The purpose of this group was to eliminate what McCain called “corporate welfare.” In a statement at the time, he noted that “There are more than 100 corporate subsidy programs in the federal budget today, requiring the federal government to spend approximately $65 billion a year…These programs provide special benefits or advantages to specific companies or industries at the expense of hard-working taxpayers. In years past, Congress has insisted that it would eliminate the existence of this corporate welfare, but virtually no such program has been eliminated…This bill aims to remove the special treatment given to politically powerful industries…”
In other words, as far back as 2002, John McCain realized that underlying what would ultimately become the Fannie and Freddie crisis was the willingness of Congress to provide financial support to private corporations. And he was willing to take on powerful interests to stop this process. If his bill had resulted in action at that time, the unprecedented steps that the Secretary of the Treasury and Congress had to take in the last two weeks would not have been necessary.
What do we do now ? The leaders of the financial world don’t know what to do. Harry Reid says no legislation is planned because they don’t know what to do.
I guess we will just have to elect McCain.
As usual, Herr Olbermann is wrong in his comments about one of McCain’s suggestions about how to deal with the crisis.
UPDATE: This comment from another blog on the subject of the AIG collapse is interesting. It ties the thread from Fannie Mae to all the other turmoil.
Question: What started this mess?
Answer: The housing “bubble” burst.
Question: How did that cause this problem?
Answer: Most mortgages are bundled and sold as fixed income securities (bonds). Once default rates went through the roof and housing values fell, the value of these bonds could not be determined.
Question: Why is that a problem?
Answer: When the value of a bond is unknown, no one wants to buy it.
Question: Why is that a problem?
Answer: Because a bond that you can’t get a bid on is pretty much worthless as an asset.
Question: And why is that a problem?
Answer: Because most financial firms are required to “mark to market” what they own. And a security that you can’t get other people to buy is valued at zero.
Question: Can’t you take an educated guess?
Answer: That’s what most firms are doing, but a guess is just a guess, not anything more precise. And if you are dealing with a firm that could be worth billions or could be billions in the hole, would you give them a loan? No. I didn’t think so. Ergo, there goes Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.
Question: And who began this mess?
Answer: Who are the world’s biggest bundlers and sellers of mortgage backed securities? Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They set the standards for mortgages. They relaxed lending standards to help the “poor” obtain home ownership. They hired lobbyists and gave millions to every politico who would take it to prevent a crackdown on their lending practices and the amount of leverage they were using. They went to incredible leverage levels to make their earnings numbers so that their politically appointed leaders could collect millions and hundreds of millions in salary and bonus.
Fannie and Freddy were the underwater earthquake that’s now creating this financial tsunami because the mortgage backed securities market involves trillions of dollars spread throughout the globe. History will show that a relatively few Democrat political hacks looking to line their own pockets may have cause the most massive financial panic in history.
9.19.2008 7:24am
UPDATE #2 This post on the Global Labor blog strikes me as wise and somber. It should be read. That link is now updated.
UPDATE #3: This Bloomberg piece has blown the lid off this story. The author is already getting threats. Guess from who ?
Tags: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, McCain, Savings and Loan
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This blog entry should be required reading for all journalists and politicians. Nice job Mike.
I don’t even know if it is all accurate but I don’t see much that is trustworthy in the press. My ex-wife is a mortgage banker and I would ask her but she is working in Atlanta for a couple of months, liquidating a failed bank.
That’s an outstanding summary of the incest between govt., investment banks, and the pseudo-govt. entities. It’s not like this wasn’t known but as long as the housing bubble inflated the combined interests in perpetuating the fiction ruled. Now we get to watch the demigogic finger pointing. Sadly, all too predictable.
Mike, excellent. One question: Was the mark-to-market requirement the result of post-Enron legislation? I thought I heard that somewhere.
Would this debacle not have happened as it did if the institutions could keep these instruments on their books without marking them down?
I don’t know but suspect it was. The whole accounting standards issue will be revisited. I think it goes back before ENRON and may date to the S&L crisis. One aspect that has not been mentioned very often is the fact that the RTC was able to sell a lot of assets acquired from defunct S&Ls so the cost was much less than early estimates. One moral hazard issue here is that many of these companies being bailed out may be tempted to unload the dogs on the feds and keep the better assets. The RTC was liquidating the S&Ls so they got all the assets, good and bad. This time there will have to be a way to let the feds choose which assets to take. Many of the RTC employees were experienced bank people and not bureaucrats. That has to happen again.
Mike, thanks. Economics is baffling on the surface, but will a little diligence it can be understood. That Bloomberg article was good reading.
[…] A Primer on the Mortgage Crisis, by Mike K. […]
THis is a good article; however a bit long for a lot of folks. I am passing it on to many of my friends, as this is straight-forward and basic.
A suggestion. Insert a link to your home page (http://abriefhistory.org) for easy access to see your credentials and to see other articles you have posted.
Thanks for your efforts to help others understand what is happening financially.
The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 removed the last incentive for borrowers to remain in “their” homes. This law must be rewritten and retitled the Patriotic Mortgage Repayment Act of 2008.
The Patriotic Mortgage Repayment Act of 2008 – If a borrower defaults on a mortgage and the market value of the collateral is insufficient to repay the money borrowed, the Treasury will recover 105% of the residual borrowed but unpaid amount using IRS collection methods and interest schedules. Such a law would prevent the general population from bailing out the speculators that purchased more house than they could reasonably afford. These wannabee flippers took grandma’s money out of the bank, now the bank has collapsed the the FDIC is having to pay off grandmas. The least these deadbeats should do is repay 100% of grandmas’ money to the treasury plus 5% as a handling fee.
It should be trivial for the borrower to meet his obligation. After the foreclosure sale recovers 60% of the original loan, the payments on the remaining 40% loss should be well within the budget of even the biggest speculative wannabe flipper real estate genius that bought at the top of the market using grandma’s money.
A look into Barack Obama’s past might shed some light on the crisis
Barack Obama joined Trinity United Church of Christ more than 20 years ago and considered the church pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright as his mentor. Rev. Wright married Obama and his wife Michelle, baptized their two daughters and is credited by Obama for the title of his book, “The Audacity of Hope.” In his sermons, Rev. Wright repeated denunciations of the U.S and blurted out statements like “The government gives them the drugs, builds bigger prisons, passes a three-strike law and then wants us to sing “God Bless America.” No, no, no, God damn America, that’s in the Bible for killing innocent people,” he said in a 2003 sermon. “God damn America for treating our citizens as less than human. God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.”
Looking at Obama’s ties to Rev. Wright, and his connections to a terrorist bomber, William Ayers, both men who would like nothing more than to destroy this country causes many people to second guess Obama’s intentions for change. If you have not heard about William Ayers, you can read about him in the U.S. News, Michael Barone’s column-Obama Needs to Explain His Ties to William Ayers. “In my U.S. News column, I make a brief reference to the unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist bomber William Ayers and his connections to Barack Obama. They were closer than Obama implied when George Stephanopoulos asked him about Ayers in the April 16 debate—the last debate Obama allowed during the primary season. To get an idea of how close they were, check out Tom Maguire’s Just One Minute blog and Steve Diamond’s Global Labor and Politics. The Obama-Ayers relationship is also mentioned in David Freddoso’s The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media’s Favorite Candidate.”
Lets examine Obama’s connection with an accused political fixer Antoin “Tony” Rezko. The following is on explanation by Brian Ross and Rhonda Schwartz from ABC News. “In sharp contrast to his tough talk about ethics reform in government, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., approached a well-known Illinois political fixer under active federal investigation, Antoin “Tony” Rezko, for “advice” as he sought to find a way to buy a house shortly after being elected to the United States Senate. Rezko had been widely reported to be under investigation by the U.S. attorney and the FBI at the time Obama contacted him and has since been indicted on corruption charges by a federal grand jury in a case that prosecutors say involves bribes, kickbacks and “efforts to illegally obtain millions of dollars.”
Because Barack Obama was a dependable ally of subsidized developers in the Legislature, his friend and fund-raiser Rezko depended on him to get things done such as cosponsoring a bill in 2001 allowing developers to pocket half of the proceeds from selling state tax credits to others. Obama admitted that his decision to involve Rezko was “a bone-headed mistake.” What he failed to mention is that he has a closet full of bone-headed mistakes such as Peter Wallsten pointed out in the Los Angeles Times on
January 24, 2008.
“Barack Obama angered fellow Democrats in the Illinois Senate when he voted to strip millions of dollars from a child welfare office on Chicago’s West Side. But Obama had a ready explanation: He goofed.
“I was not aware that I had voted no,” he said that day in June 2002, asking that the record be changed to reflect that he “intended to vote yes.”
That was not the only misfire for the former civil rights attorney first elected to the state Senate in 1996. During his eight years in state office, Obama cast more than 4,000 votes. Of those, according to transcripts of the proceedings in Springfield, he hit the wrong button at least six times.”
Now comes the big question, what exactly does a community organizer do?
One thing Barack Obama did as a community organizer was pressure banks to make bad loans. In Barack Obama’s youthful community organizing days he joined a group called ACORN. Using the Community Reinvestment Act which was designed to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers, ACORN started abusing the law by forcing banks to make hundreds of millions of dollars in ‘subprime’ loans to minorities with bad or no credit. Using charges of racism and threats to use CRA to block business expansions have enabled ACORN to extract hundreds of millions of dollars in loans and contributions from America’s financial institutions.
Other things that ACORN did as community organizers were agitate for higher minimum wages, attempt to thwart school reform, try to unionize welfare recipients who are obliged to work in exchange for benefits and organize voter registration drives. In 2006 for example, their voter registration drive in Washington produced 1,800 new voters of which 1,794 names submitted were fake. The secretary of state called it the “worst case of election fraud in our state’s history.”
If you like to know more, watch these two videos.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRmB93McZeI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MGT_cSi7Rs
Cybercorrespondent
http://cybercorrespondent.blogspot.com
Thursday morning I turned on the news and heard that ACORN is under investigation for voter fraud in a number of states. Since I learned not to trust what the media tells us, I decided to have a look what the bloggers had to say. On a sight called A Look Into Barack Obama’s Past – Obamamania – Zimbio website I found the following comment that made me think.
A concerned citizen
Oct-6-08 7:48pm [Edit]
Those two videos paint a very clear picture. As the terrorists have promised, they will destroy this country from with in. …..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puN9X1mVgRA ……..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjvBEKrGkDI …….
Back to my point. By allowing the voter fraud to go on, makes this great country look like a third world dictatorship. We are supposed to send an example to the rest of the world how honest elections are held and not allow the media to distort the facts. Please people, wake up and tell the media no more. Boycott all the products advertised on publications like the Newsweek, Time magazine and other propaganda machines like the New York Times. Also do the same with CNN and other communist propaganda news sources. Even the Fox News network is starting to sway the viewer decision. After Thursday’s presidential debate, watching Chris Wallace interview a communist from Saint Louis made me sick. Even bad journalists should realize that when you ask a communist or a skin head to give you their views, you can pretty much expect what they are going to say.
I certainly had enough of all of the $%#@Comunism.org
Cybercorrespondent
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great post hope to see some additional comments next Friday…chao 😉
WILMINGTON, Del. — DuPont Co. says it will cut 2,500 jobs, mostly serving the U.S. and European automotive and construction markets, due to lower demand linked to the steep global decline in homebuilding, auto sales and consumer spending.