Mind Over Market

Readers who want to understand the causal link between mortgages and the financial crisis will find it revealed in Black Box . LaMalfa on Books Black Box Casino: How Wall Street's Risky Shadow Banking Crashed Global Finance By Robert Stowe England Praeger, 2011 Mortgage Banking April 2012, page 25 There's been no shortgage of new books the past several years on the topic of financial crisis caustion. However, until now all have failed to connect the dots from the housing boom that began in the mid-1990s to the crash of 2008. Robert Stowe England, a senior writer for Mortgage Banking magazine, connects more dots than most in his new book, Black Box Casino: How Wall Street's Risky Shadow Banking Crashed Global Finance. Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner's Reckless Endangerment (2011) took readers deeper into the central role that Fannie Mae played in the financial crash than did Michael Lewis ( The Big Short ), Bethany McClean and Joe Nocera ( ...

Bank of America Home Loans has forged its new identity with a focus on customer satisfaction and quality loan origination. The 2008 acquisition of Countrywide has given the bank the production platform and technology prowess of a former industry leader. Add to that, B of A's internal discipline and a focus on profitable origination, and you have the makings of a lending powerhouse. By Robert Stowe England Mortgage Banking October 2009 “The whole is more than the sum of its parts,” the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle famously stated. It’s a powerful idea that resonates today in the dynamic business culture of mortgage banking, which has dramatically consolidated in these times of financial pain and market turmoil in ways no one would have imagined two years ago. In the case of Bank of America Home Loans, Calabasas, California, the company has sought to implement a strategy to make the merged whole better than the sum of its parts. Those parts being the former Countrywide Home Lo...