While home owners shouldn’t get off the hook so easily, lending institutions and their employees have a responsibility to the shareholders to increase profits, while also protecting the company’s balance sheet.

This is like Enron IMO. Lies and lack of oversight were ok’ed by the silence from above as long as the profits were rising.

Unfortunately, too big to fail meant they had an ace in the hole.

I think it all comes down to how the note/mortgage was wriiten if it’s only secured by the property than shame on the bank if the value of the property goes down.

anon2, Question. Should the banks take any reponsibility of risk? No income verification no problem, if the homeowner lost his job…… the govt will bail out the bank.