Fraud and folly: The untold story of General Electric’s subprime debacle

[marmar]

from the Center for Public Integrity:



Ex-employees say GE ignored warnings from whistleblowers

By Michael Hudson
6:00 am, January 6, 2012 Updated: 20 hours, 1 minutes ago


For General Electric Co., hawking subprime mortgages was a long way from making light bulbs and jet engines.

That didn't stop the industrial giant from jumping into the subprime business in 2004, lending blue-chip respectability to the market for risky home loans by paying roughly half a billion dollars to buy California-based WMC Mortgage Corp.

What GE got in the bargain, former WMC employees say, was a place where erstwhile shoe salesmen, ex-strippers and even a former porn actress could sign on as sales reps and make big money pushing home loans. WMC's top salespeople earned a million dollars a year or more and lived fast, swigging $1,000 bottles of Cristal and wheeling around in $100,000 Ferraris and Bentleys.

In pursuit of these riches and perks, several ex-employees claim, many WMC sales staffers embraced fraud as a tool for pushing through loans that borrowers couldn’t afford. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://dev.publicintegrity.org/2012/01/06/7802/fraud-and-folly-untold-story-general-electric-s-subprime-debacle

[qb]

1. I hope this awful company suffers greatly.

What I remember most about GE is the way its head manipulated reporting on election night 2000 to favor GWB.

[Octafish]

2. The Fed bailed GE out to the tune of $140 billion...

http://seekingalpha.com/article/105984-general-electric-gets-a-140b-bailout-what-s-the-point-of-aaa

...that we know about.