Fannie Mae, seized by the U.S. government in 2008 to avert the mortgage company’s failure, launched an initiative in January that allows some first-time home buyers to get a loan with a down payment of as little as $1,000. Securities firm Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, a brokerage operation jointly owned by Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc., is offering some clients home-equity credit lines of as much as $2.5 million.
Credit-card issuers mailed 84.8 million offers of plastic to U.S. subprime borrowers in the first six months of this year, up from 43.7 million a year earlier, estimates research firm Synovate. Nearly 8% of loans for new cars in the latest quarter went to borrowers with the lowest range of credit scores, up from 6.2% in 2009’s fourth quarter, according to J.D. Power & Associates and Fair Isaac Corp. …
Shirley Davis, a 66-year-old retired phone-company administrator who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., is more than $33,000 in debt, earns just $2,414 a month and filed for bankruptcy in June. Shortly before that, she ripped open an envelope from Capital One Financial Corp., which pitched her a credit card even though it sued her in 2006 to recover $4,470 she owed on a different card from the bank.
“At some point we lost you as a customer and we’d like to have you back,” the letter said. Ms. Davis said she was stunned. “Even I wouldn’t give me a credit card at this point,” she said.
Did we not learn anything the first time? Take into account that the Financial Regulation Bill passed yesterday has no restrictions.....NO REGULATION (I mean not to the extent that private lenders will get)....on the entities that played essential roles in the financial collapse in 2007. Of course, I mean Federally run, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under the FHA.
Making high risk loans to unqualified borrowers is part of the reason why we got us into this mess. Lenders aren't lending because we want them to be more responsible (and they have no idea what's going to happen next year when taxes jump), so the fix is to promote high risk lending? Why make the same mistakes again?
Surely that doesn't sound responsible
