Actually that is the claim - "fact that the same company can both provide a loan and then insure that same loan creates an ethical conflict of interest that calls into question their ability to objectively quantify risk"
Of course, the insurance that we're talking about wasn't for individual mortgages but for loan portfolios and tranches of loan portfolios. (The "insurance" wrt the effect of individual loans comes from the portfolio - instead of "loan fails or not", you get "fraction of loans that fail".)
> it's that they had a sliding scale of how bad a loan they were willing to make because of incentive to have lax ethical standards
That's completely incorrect. The "how bad a loan" stuff came from loan orignators as pushed by CRA, govt officials, and fannie and freddie.
Ethics had nothing to do with it. Or rather, the "ethic" of "folks should get a loan regardless of whether they can repay" overrode the financial reality of "loans made to people who are unlikely to be able to repay are likely fail".
Citigroup wasn't big in loan origination. They did their "magic" on portfolios that they bought from other magicians and from folks who originated loans.
Of course, the insurance that we're talking about wasn't for individual mortgages but for loan portfolios and tranches of loan portfolios. (The "insurance" wrt the effect of individual loans comes from the portfolio - instead of "loan fails or not", you get "fraction of loans that fail".)
> it's that they had a sliding scale of how bad a loan they were willing to make because of incentive to have lax ethical standards
That's completely incorrect. The "how bad a loan" stuff came from loan orignators as pushed by CRA, govt officials, and fannie and freddie.
Ethics had nothing to do with it. Or rather, the "ethic" of "folks should get a loan regardless of whether they can repay" overrode the financial reality of "loans made to people who are unlikely to be able to repay are likely fail".
Citigroup wasn't big in loan origination. They did their "magic" on portfolios that they bought from other magicians and from folks who originated loans.