As self-righteous Senators grill Goldman Sachs about their role in the housing bubble, it would not be far fetched to request that the Senators switch seats with the Goldman executives.
After all, it wasn’t Goldman that passed the Community Reinvestment Act that forced banks to make loans to people who could never pay them back. It wasn’t Goldman that created and supported Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And it wasn’t Goldman that drove interest rates down to a below market level to cause a housing rush not seen since gold was found in them thar’ hills in the mid-1800s.
But if Senators were really interested in finding out the cause of the housing bubble, they would call one Eric Stein to the dais.
Mr. Stein is currently that Deputy Secretary of Treasury for consumer protection and is likely to head the vastly powerful Consumer Bureaucracy currently being pushed by big banks and Wall Street. But prior to his appointment to Treasury, Mr. Stein the bag man for the Center for Responsible Lending and its many Self Help subsidiaries, was singly responsible for more bad loans than all Goldman employees together. Working with billionaire con-man John Paulson, Stein lobbied to pass the laws at the root of the crisis and pressured banks to make bad loans that caused their portfolios to collapse when the economy turned. They were the Bonnie and Clyde of the subprime mortgage world.
It’s time for a hearing focusing on the real cause of the housing bubble. It’s time to call Eric Stein up to the Hill for questioning under oath.