Jack M. Guttentag The Mortgage Professor

Rogue Trader - Friday, April 11, 2008, 5:11PM ET  Report Abuse

• Overall: 2/5

to Rapunzel: I don't think it's Bush's fault (not this one at least). However, you cannot deny that strong housing has been mentioned in a great number of his speeches for which he so proudly took credit for. Neil Cavuto and other geniuses on "Fox and Friends" have been praising him for the very same thing.

taopraxis - Friday, March 14, 2008, 11:48AM ET  Report Abuse

• Overall: 1/5

The very people who failed to forecast the approaching crisis that what was so obvious to so many others, who, in fact, arguably *caused* this real estate/currency/credit crisis, the very people who failed to properly regulate the banks and brokers they are now fruitlessly trying to bail out, the same people who failed to control government spending in order to maintain the value of the dollar and failed in their fiduciary duty to the taxpayers, these are people who are neither competent enough nor credible enough to effectively regulate our complex, opaque, and unstable financial system at all. Thus, perhaps it is not so very unfortunate that these soviet-style central planners, whose failed bets supported by dubious statistics were so incomprehensibly large, are now finding that, having lost those bets, they have hubristically exceeded their own limitations. That is why the usual liquidity machinations have proved incapable of fixing it. Too much paper and too few suckers left to absorb it. These sorcerer's apprentices have started something they cannot stop and have now been reduced to watching along with the rest of us as the market washes away the fantastic excesses and distortions wrought by their failed policy of debt monetization and inflation. My message to these failed central planners is simple: "Please. Don't help. You've done quite enough already, thank you."

Coach - Sunday, February 17, 2008, 12:42PM ET  Report Abuse

• Overall: 1/5

I'm not sure if this commentator get's it. We cannot rely on the government to regulate how private business is run. The blame simply falls on the lack of due diligence on the borrower's part...

Rapunzel - Monday, February 11, 2008, 5:29PM ET  Report Abuse

• Overall: 3/5

wow, in regard to the commentary below...wow. So the president is now responsible for all of these lending woes too? You really are unhinged. I too work in this field and you can bet that this president, the last president...any president...is a bit too busy to deal with something like this. I am pretty sure that we have any number of authorities who should be held accountable for some of this mess. I do agree that the none of your business loans really are the predominant culprits here and not the "bad credit folks". Frankly, the lenders doing the bad credit folks went down mighty fast. But, the rest of us at reputable lenders still struggle with loss and the messes and our struggles cannot be so easily explained since giving loans to bad credit folks was not on the top of our list. On the other hand, giving loans to folks with good credit at high loan to values was. Once we stop blaming the Bad credit folks and perhaps the President of the USA...we might actually find a solution to this horrible fiasco. And since we do want to trash presidents..we might all do well to remember in this election year that not so long ago, one of the candidates running was knee deep in a thing called Whitewater. I would be a bit concerned that someone tainted in that mess would be the one in charge of pulling us out of this one.

Yahoo! Finance User - Monday, February 11, 2008, 7:22AM ET  Report Abuse

• Overall: 3/5

The problem is simple: 1) No Documention Loans. 2) 125% LTVs (s/b 80%) 3) Fraud by the broker and the borrower. Who made the decisions to accept item 1 and 2 that perpetuated 3? Why can't our elected officials tell us specifically who is responsible for this mess? What parties in the administration gave the nod? How far up does conspiracy go? I have worked in the field fo 20 years and suspected this would eventually happen. I wasn't irate about it because I never needed to cheat. But I am now because it's going to cost all of us. Congress can't tell us who because it would show that were asleep at the wheel. The White House can't because it was their and their cronies ideas in the first place. How far up? All the way up an all the way down. Hell, back in the early 90's Citibank would have some customers fill out the income verification papers and seal them in an envelope and put them in the safe w/o anyone ever looking at them just to cover their asses and say they had done their job if things went sour!!! Why? Because greed trumps intellegence every time. Bush must have thought it was a good way to let the little guy participate in the booming economy while he ignored trade rules that took away the good jobs.