Washington Policies Spawned the Toxic Mortgages and Assets That Brought Us the Financial Crisis
Lecture to Ethics Class Carey School of Business, Johns Hopkins University Legg-Mason Building, Baltimore East Harbor Campus Inner Harbor, Baltimore, Maryland August 27, 2012 By Robert Stowe England It’s nearly four years since the advent of financial crisis. Yet, for most Americans, a thick fog still shrouds its origins Finding the answer to what went wrong is what compelled me to write Black Box Casino. In the end, it was a detective story where even a list of important actors could run into the hundreds. At the center of origins of the crisis is a single industry – the mortgage industry. As senior writer for Mortgage Banking magazine since 1988, I have reported on the vast changes sweeping through the industry for more than two decades. The mortgage industry in 2008 was nothing like it was when I started covering it. Twenty years ago the mortgage industry was disciplined by the free market. It was flexible and innovative. New loan products would appear and