Mind Over Market

In an exhaustive study of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, British author Oonagh McDonald concludes that the two government-sponsored enterprises led the way in pushing down lending standards for the entire mortgage industry from the early 1990s onward. Their role was largely concealed from the public eye because they hid the ongoing erosion of lending standards in a black box underwriting system that was manipulated internally to approve loans for borrowers with bad credit and who could not be shown to be able to repay the loan. The banks and Wall Street followed their lead, according to Dr. McDonald.  When Fannie and Freddie moved deeper into subprime after 2000, it pushed private label securitizers of mortgages even deeper into the bad credit pool. Fannie and Freddie became the number one purchaser of private label securities, driving the growth of this market. When delinquencies rose, private label mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) and their associated collateralized debt obligat...

CNBC's Squawk Box, Tuesday, May 14, 2013 Hedge fund titan David Tepper, founder and president of Appaloosa Management, told CNBC on Tuesday he's still bullish on stocks and investors shouldn't worry about the Federal Reserve tapering its massive bond-buying program. "There better be a true [Fed] taper or else you might be back into the last half of 1999," Tepper said in a "Squawk Box" interview. "So like guys that are short, they better have a shovel to get themselves out of the grave." Read more here .

Becky Quick interviews Martin Feldstein on CNBC's Squawk Box at 8:40 am, April 5, 2013. Quote: "It's not just that the payroll gain was 88,000 jobs, but the very sharp decline in labor market participation rate. So, this is a very weak labor market." Quote: "I think that we're going to be very lucky . . . if if we get 2% growth this year. Last year we had less than 2% growth and 2% the year before, and I think we're starting off pretty badly."

CNBC, April 3, 2013, 10:50 a.m. Another classic rant from Rick Santelli!

Melissa Lee of CNBC inveterviews Marc Faber February 21, 2013 Rough transcript highlights of interview: stocks having their biggest two-day decline. should investors be prepared for a correction or even worse? joining us now on the fast line is marc faber. marc, good to have you with us. you're going to be pretty doomy and gloomy tonight, i'm guessing, but in terms of a pull-back, you've said in the past, a 1987-like correction. is that what -- is this the beginning of that? i don't think that's yet there. but i think we have made the top and it could be a longer term top. i don't think the market is overbought as it was in '87, so, i don't expect a crash. but i think, for the time being, the market has peaked out. and i think that in the meantime, bonds, which are extremely oversold, could rebound. so, let me get this straight, marc, just to be clear for the viewers out there. you don't necessarily think at this point in time, thi...

The nation's debt as a percentage of the economy is going to cause a fiscal storm, Home Depot Founder Kenneth Langone told CNBC on Tuesday. President Barack Obama's roadmap to reduce the deficit and invest in the future is "generational theft of an enormous magnitude," Langone said in a "Squawk Box" interview. "The fundamentals haven't changed ... And we don't know when the storm is going to hit," he predicted. "It has to happen. If you look at our debt to GDP, eventually you reach a point where there's no turning back." He used an analogy to make his point. "If you had one meal left, and you had your grandchild with you, would you eat if or give it to your grandchild?" He said all people would say "give it to my grandchild." But pursuing the president's vision, he argued, "[Is] eating the grandchildren's breakfast, lunch and dinner right now. And the [grandchildren] ha...

In an interview on CNBC's Squawk Box December 17, 2012: David Tepper, president & founder, Appaloosa Management, says what the Fed has done helped the markets. He also says he believes the Fed sees a 6 percent unemployment rate is the trigger for inflation. He also says Obama's legacy will be defined by entitlement reform.