Dallas Recently fingers once again pointed at the “rating” agencies on Wall Street as one of the meltdown makers who have successfully escaped any real reform in the last year from Congress or the financial world shakers.  Wall Street would obviously still believe this is all about them and want to make sure that wheelers and dealers had more “good faith” guidance, but meltdown makers are still mostly untouched, and that’s worth noting.

Mortgage brokers are still largely unaffected by the meltdown.  Oh sure some of them are part of the “vast army of the unemployed,” certainly, but little has been done to tighten down the environment, incentives, license requirements or much of anything else, once mortgage credit becomes available again.  A state by state mishmash is not a solution, but – correct me if I’m wrong – nothing much in the way of reform is really pending.  Broker networks pushed a huge amount of loans down the pipeline without regard to affordability, legality, and much else.  Mortgage brokers need to be on a shortlist for the future.

And, don’t mention the banks!  Another report today that less than 5% (about 31,000 homeowners) have succeeded in winning permanent loan modifications after all of the sound and fury – and money! – sent to banks to fix this problem while foreclosures accelerate unabated.

Talk about unaccountability!  This is same ol’, same ol’, leaving us learning a lot but doing little to prepare to protect the public from such rapacity in the future.