Posted
Dec 18 2007, 04:55 PM
by
Charley Blaine
Here's hoping that, in the aftermath of the subprime-mortgage mess, someone comes up with some standard provisions for adjustable-rate mortgages that apply equally across the country, that everyone understands and that regulators actively and aggressively enforce.
Otherwise, we'll have to go through the subprime mortgage crisis a third time.
A third time? Yes, indeed. It seems to me that the subprime mortgage mess was created by a lot of people with short memories or no memories.
In the early 1980s, as mortgage rates were jumping, the mortgage industry came up with a lot of new mortgages designed to make housing affordable. Many were just as goofy as the weird mortgages we've seen lately as the subprime crisis deepens. In fact, they look like old ideas, dusted off to solve a slightly different problem: how to deal with gigantic price increases.
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