Yep, it's fraud: New Economic Perspectives

New Economic Perspectives:

This is the sort of talk we need! Cut the crap, just tell it like it is.

"Every link of the home finance food chain was designed to promote fraud—from the mortgage brokers and appraisers who conspired to overvalue property to stick buyers with overpriced homes, to the mortgage lenders who preferred the riskiest mortgages to maximize interest and fees, on to the investment bankers that packaged them into securities that they bet would blow up, and to the credit rating agencies who conspired to certify the junk as triple A. We should not forget the hedge fund managers who worked closely with investment banks like Goldman to re-securitize the very worst stuff into CDOs, sold on to Goldman’s gullible customers, nor the mortgage servicers (who not coincidentally happen to be the same biggest banks that created the toxic mortgages) who now maximize late fees as they drag out foreclosures while preventing loan modifications."