Cisneros Talks about His role in Mortgage fiasco

Big Don

Sr. Grandmaster
Joined
Sep 2, 2007
Messages
10,551
Reaction score
189
Location
Sanger CA
October 19, 2008
The Reckoning
The New York Times
Excerpt:


Building Flawed American Dreams

By DAVID STREITFELD and GRETCHEN MORGENSON
SAN ANTONIO — A grandson of Mexican immigrants and a former mayor of this town, Henry G. Cisneros has spent years trying to make the dream of homeownership come true for low-income families.
As the Clinton administration’s top housing official in the mid-1990s, Mr. Cisneros loosened mortgage restrictions so first-time buyers could qualify for loans they could never get before.


Then, capitalizing on a housing expansion he helped unleash, he joined the boards of a major builder, KB Home, and the largest mortgage lender in the nation, Countrywide Financial
***SNIP***
For the three years he was a director at KB Home, Mr. Cisneros received at least $70,000 in pay and more than $100,000 worth of stock. He also received $1.14 million in directors’ fees and stock grants during the six years he was a director at Countrywide. He made more than $5 million from Countrywide stock options, money he says he plowed into his company.
He says his development work provides an annual income of “several hundred thousand” dollars.
***SNIP***
They were lured by “unscrupulous participants — bankers, brokers, secondary market people,” he says. “The country is paying for that, and families are hurt because we as a society did not draw a line.”
END EXCERPT:
So, bankers are at fault when earlier in the article
Cisneros loosened mortgage restrictions so first-time buyers could qualify for loans they could never get before.
? Had the restrictions not been loosened by the Clinton appointed Cisneros, who left office after paying hush money to his mistress, would the same mess exist?
After a sex scandal destroyed his promising political career
Aren't 99% of sex scandals really HONESTY scandals? Had he not cheated on his wife, which is dishonest, he wouldn't have left office when he did...
One more excerpt:
“The irresistible temptation to engage in subprime was Countrywide’s fatal error,” he says. “I fault myself for not having seen it and, since it was not something I could change, having left.”
End Excerpt
If he, as he said freely, knew it was a problem when he left Countrywide, why, then, wasn't he running around screaming "Fire!"? Why wasn't he acting as a Whistle Blower?
When the Clinton Appointed former head of HUD says his actions led to the mortgage debacle, is it still Bush's fault as so many in the media, and, btw, on this board, have been telling us? Or is it that at the federal level many things that one administration starts are not felt until the next? Jamie Gorelick's wall of separation between law enforcement and intelligence agencies exacerbated the monumental task of preventing terrorist attacks like 9-11. The Boom Clinton rode in the nineties was largely the result of the policies of Reagan. Iran/Contra was a result of the Carter administration's inept manner of statecraft. A bit farther back, and the Vietnam war, which, the military was never allowed to fight in an effective manner by Kennedy or Johnson lands in Nixon's lap. Even farther back, FDR's first election is almost a direct result of the Great Depression which started in Hoover's term.
 

Latest Discussions

Top