Predatory mortgage lenders and credit snobs

I’ve been somewhat interested in the pushback against critics of subprime loans. The argument is that subprime loans have made cheap debt available to a much wider swathe of society that traditional mortgage lending left out. Cheap debt was a privilege previously available to corporations and the relatively well off, and extending that privilege to a greater portion of society is a good thing. I find the argument somewhat persuasive. Put me in the category of people who argue that making mortgages available to more people is a good thing, but who also recognize that there was a lot of fraud, deception, and exploitation being perpetrated by the mortgage industry. Selling home loans to people that were certain to leave them in default as soon as runaway appreciation ended was evil. Anyway, Andrew Leonard has a blog post on this topic that’s worth a read.