The Current Economy

Once upon a time, a creative photographer settled for a good paying job in the mortgage industry (at the largest privately held mortgage company in the nation). Rising to the level of Assistant Vice President in the Loan Administration Division, the photographer wasn’t really happy and had no release for his creativity. Along came a position as the company website manager/photographer/graphic artist and the photographer found himself in a job that agreed with him.

Around 2003 or so, the photographer found himself making changes to the website as the result of requests from branches around the nation. These branches were wanting to offer a variety of VERY speculative loan products and wanted them advertised on the website. The photographer talked to his old friends in Loan Administration and they too  were concerned that these loans were very risky.

Many meeting were held among the senior management of the company and the decision was made to go ahead and make these risky loans. The reason being that they saw other companies like WAMU making millions of dollars from these loans and they wanted a piece of the pie. They had no eye for the future. So the photographer watched in horror as the company offered dangerous loans to the public and the public consumed them like candy. They also had no eye for the future. Eventually, the mortgage company was sold to another company and the home office was closed and 800 people here in Fort Wayne lost their jobs. This gave the photographer the opportunity to start a thriving freelance photography business.

So who caused the current financial crisis? It’s not so much who, but what – greed. Borrower’s were greedy to get into homes they couldn’t afford. (The same reason many people lease cars). Loan officers were greedy for commissions (the higher the loan balance, the higher the commission). Institutional investers (Freddy, Fannie, Bear Sterns, et. al) were greedy for to sell more mortgage backed securities. All of this ran unchecked due, in a large part, to the 1999 deregulation of the boundaries between commercial and investment banks.

The moral of this story? Sadly, all of this could have been avoided if they would have listened to the photographer. 🙂