The broker brand: in hindsight, brokers have been singled out for blame for the subprime lending bust. But can they restore their industry once we get past all the finger-pointing?

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Cover Report: Wholesale / Retail

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The broker brand: in hindsight, brokers have been singled out for blame for the subprime lending bust. But can they restore their industry once we get past all the finger-pointing?

There were many factors behind the thundering collapse of the U.S. mortgage market in 2007, but one group seems to have received the lion's share of the blame--mortgage brokers. To be sure, there were unscrupulous brokers who steered naive borrowers into mortgages that were inappropriate for them. But to lay the gravest financial crisis of the past 50 years at the feet of mortgage brokers would be like blaming the Great Chicago fire solely on Mrs. O'Leary's cow. * Perhaps when future generations look back on this economic cataclysm, they'll see the mortgage broker as a leading player, to be sure--but also one of an ensemble of characters that contributed to the market's undoing. In the meantime, the mortgage brokerage industry faces an uncertain future, in part because it has been made the scapegoat for what happened by federal and state regulators...

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