Cembalest: "Subprime Crisis Was GSE-Driven Too"

``"Agencies played a larger role in the housing crisis than we first reported... 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..." If you're wondering why it took Cembalest and Co so long to figure this out after the housing collapse, the JPMorgan analyst blames nothing less than "creative reporting" that masked the agencies' real subprime lending. Fannie Mae classified a mortgage as subprime only if the loan was originated by a lender specialising in subprime, or by the subprime units of the big banks. They didn't use things like credit, or FICO, scores to report all subprime exposure, thus reducing its reported subprime loan count.''