by the 1990s American mortgages were passing through at least five different institutions—originators, wholesalers of packages of mortgages, underwriters who assessed risk, government-sponsored enterprises and servicers who managed the flow of interest income—before being sold to an investor. Along that chain, what confidence could an investor have that the job was being done correctly? At each step of the way the main concerns were volume and fees. Who had an interest in maintaining quality? Perhaps it was not the government subsidy but these perverse incentives that led to the huge boom in
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