I had promised myself to step back from my computer today, but I couldn’t after reading this one.- [Kids, if Sunday dinner is a little late today, blame the Judge for sending this irresistible link.]
The Las Vegas Sun is reporting today that Joe Waltuch has been appointed the new head of the Nevada Mortgage Lending Division. Waltuch was vice-president and senior counsel for regulatory and legislative affairs at the now "imploded" New Century Financial Corp. Mendy Elliot, Governor Gibbon’s director of Business and Industry Department, defended her appointee:
"Not every executive at Enron was a crook," she said.
While that may be true, Waltuch’s view of subprime lending is just a little worrisome:
Joe Waltuch, the new head of the Nevada Mortgage Lending Division, defended the subprime mortgage industry and downplayed the foreclosure crisis in his first interview.
Although he acknowledged a problem, he said, "You’re missing the positive side of all this."
Subprime loans - high interest loans given to people with spotty credit histories - represent just 15 percent of the market, he said. Only 1.5 percent of all mortgages, he said, will end up in foreclosure: "Everybody seems to think we need to protect the 1,500 at the expense of the 98,500 good loans."
"We put a lot of people in homes who wouldn’t otherwise be in homes," he said.
