What happened?!?

Analysts who once downplayed the government’s role in causing the financial crisis now have changed their tune, concluding that government regulations that promoted risky loans played a major role in spawning the crisis. In a May 3 note to clients, Michael Cembalest, the Chief Investment Officer of JP Morgan Private Bank, revised his 2009 account of what caused the financial crisis. Under the heading, “Retractions – the primary catalyst for the US housing crisis,” he wrote:
“US Agencies played a larger role in the housing crisis than we first reported. 
In January 2009, I wrote that the housing crisis was mostly a consequence of the private sector… However, over the last 2 years, analysts have dissected the housing crisis in greater detail. What emerges from new research is something quite different: government agencies now look to have guaranteed, originated or underwritten 60% of all “non-traditional” mortgages, which totaled $4.6 trillion in June 2008. What’s more, this research asserts that housing policies instituted in the early 1990s were explicitly designed to require US Agencies to make much riskier loans, with the ultimate goal of pushing private sector banks to adopt the same standards.” (emphasis in original)

Read more >> OpenMarket.org...