Say Anything Blog

We might be able to buy the “we got bamboozled” line from sub-prime borrowers who hit the skids when their adjustable-rate mortgage payments went sky-high, but are we really supposed to believe that highly-educated US Senators didn’t know what was going on with their mortgages?

For many many months now I’ve been suggesting (that’s a nice word for it) that in addition to plenty of predatory lending during the housing boom, a lot of folks just plain didn’t take the time to read their paperwork or even ask when exactly their adjustable rate loans would adjust.

I’ve been told, well, these mortgage documents are just too hard for most folks to understand, and most borrowers don’t know what questions to ask. This whole housing crisis is really just the lenders’ faults, right?

Am I now to lump some U.S. Senators in with those confused borrowers?

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So am I to believe that these high-ranking Senators, and a former Fannie CEO, didn’t read their loan documents to figure out that they were getting a special deal?? Did they not know enough about how mortgages work to figure it out? And why would Mozilo give these folks a special deal if he didn’t expect them to at least know about it??

The Senators are claiming they had no idea. Come on. I realize I’m supposed to accept that all those subprime borrowers didn’t understand their loans, but to accept that these well-educated leaders of our government didn’t—well that insults my intelligence, and every borrower’s out there.

Kent Conrad knew what he was doing when he called up Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo and asked for a loan.  When you want a deal on a lawnmower at a hardware store you don’t talk to the cashier you talk to the manager.  When you want a mortgage with special considerations and a special rate you don’t talk to one of the lending officers.  You talk to the CEO.