Subprime and the Banks: Guilty as Charged [View All]

[Roland99]

Subprime and the Banks: Guilty as Charged
http://executivesuite.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/14/subprime-and-the-banks-guilty-as-charged/?hp

Last weekend, after the column was published, an angry mortgage broker — someone who felt she and her ilk were being unfairly scapegoated by the banking industry — sent me a series of rather eye-opening documents. They were a series of fliers and advertisements that had been sent to her office (and mortgage brokers all over the country) from JPMorgan Chase, advertising their latest wares. They were dated 2005, which was before the subprime mortgage boom got completely out of control. They’re still pretty sobering.

“The Top 10 Reasons to Choose Chase for All Your Subprime Needs,” screams the headline on the first one. Another was titled, “Chase No Doc,” and described the criteria for a borrower to receive a so-called no-document loan. “Got Bank Statements?” asked a third flier. “Get Approved!” In a number of the fliers, Chase makes it clear to the mortgage brokers that the bank doesn’t need income or job verification — it just needs to look at a handful of old bank statements.

“There were mortgage brokers who acted unethically, absolutely,” my source told me when I called her on Monday. (She asked to remain anonymous because she still has to work with JPMorgan Chase and the other big banks.) “But where do you think mortgage brokers were getting the subprime mortgages they were selling to customers? From the big banks, that’s where. Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America — they were all doing it.”

So enough already about how the banks weren’t the problem. Of course they were. Here’s the evidence, right here. Read ’em and weep.

Here's the link to that evidence:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs/executivesuite/ChaseFlyer.pdf