1. The Bankers
2. Real Estate Agents
3. Credit Rating Agencies
Most Bankers are now putting a lot of effort into shifting the blame onto the Governments for relaxing the rules on lending. What they don’t mention is that is was the Bankers themselves who were screaming at the Government to relax the rules. Ideally, they wanted NO rules so they could do what they pleased. Bankers take pleasure in taking their bonuses (the bigger the better) but detest taking the blame for anything. As you may have experienced, they love overcharging (stealing) their customers but simply despise having to give the money back. So, NO moral or ethical points for Bankers. Come on lads—show you’re grown up and say you’re sorry!
The Real Estate Agents couldn't’t have pulled it off without the Bankers, but the property bubble is at the heart of the matter. It is the Estate Agents greed for their commissions that pumped air into the bubble. The higher the house price, the higher the commission. What did you expect from an unregulated industry? At every sale, the house price went higher and higher—until we reached fantasy prices for bricks and mortar. Their imbedded mortgage sales personnel encouraged buyers to lie about their circumstances, and to take out mortgages they had no hope of repaying. Thus the toxic mortgage was born.
The Credit Rating Agencies like Standard & Poor, Fitch Rating, and Moody seem not to have been able to tell the difference between a diamond and a turd. They kept rating the toxic papers as AAA, meaning Alt-A, whereas they were Alt-B and even Alt-C, and with such criminal dyslexia they really shouldn't’t be in the business they are in. Giving the USELESS mortgage papers a AAA rating allowed them to be sold on as if they were worth gold. If I were running a business, I would totally ignore the Credit Rating Agencies as not being fit for purpose.
