Alan Greenspan Blames Securitization for Crisis

Were Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac the main culprits responsible for selling dud securities on the market?

Peter L. Griffiths 12:51PM September 27, 2011

When you hava a mortgage that is securitized, who has the original signed Mortgage Note?

is it lostin all the transactions? If noone has it, only copies, how do you know who you are supposed to really pay your mortgage payment to?

Wouldn't it be tragic if in a few years someone presented the original and demanded all back payments and it wasn't the company you had been paying that only had a copy of the note!

Seems with all the selling of the notes, and all we get is a notice in the mail of the NEW company to start paying, it is risky. Anyone with a good color copying machine could send you a notice like that.

I say only pay a company that can prove they have the original signed note to protect yourself as a homeowner!

John of AL 2:32PM February 26, 2010

Despite the billions of dollars thrown at the “credit crunch” problem the crux of our financial problems has yet to be attended to, and ironically may even fuel inflation. The core problem affecting our financial institutions are the trillions of dollars worth of irregular financial derivatives (CDOs and CDSs) which have become highly devalued due to the declining housing market that they were often tied to and the consequent drying up of the derivatives market.

The financial derivatives were bought and sold in an unregulated “gray market,” where even their true “mark to market” value could not be easily ascertained. The huge burden of their losses were not even recorded in the financial statements of the companies who held them…so investors had no idea what these companies’ worth really were, as manifested by the erratic stock market now that the facts have come to light.

Obviously the only cure for this financial cancer is to pass legislation which makes for market “transparency,” which means regulation of a derivatives market using accounting procedures that clarify rather than obfuscates the nature of these financial products. No longer can Congress sit back idly, receiving large amounts of contributions from the businesses they were supposed to provide oversight of. Congressional leaders, including the presidential candidates, must make a 180 degree turn and begin providing the type of regulation that had been in place with the Glass-Steagall Act, so that investors will once again have confidence in the market.

steve of FL 9:18PM October 23, 2008