Dimon blames leverage, risk taking and fraud. Here's some background on leverage and Paulson...
- Whitewash On Wall Street: How Henry Paulson Created The Financial Crisis That Brought Down The World
---
Dimon calls Fannie, Freddie 'biggest disasters of all time'
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon said government-sponsored mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were “the biggest disasters of all time” and a leading cause of the U.S. financial crisis.
“That one was an accident waiting to happen,” Dimon said in an Oct. 20, 2010, interview with the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The congressional panel yesterday released audio files of interviews gathered during its 18-month investigation into the causes of the crisis.
The Obama administration is set to announce in Washington today its recommendations on how to restructure the U.S. housing finance system. Washington-based Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in McLean, Virginia, have taken more than $150 billion in federal aid since regulators seized their operations in September 2008.
“We all knew about it, we all worried about it, no one did anything about it,” Dimon, 54, told investigators.
Dimon said lax lending standards across the industry and excessive leverage and risk-taking by banks helped cause the crisis.
- “You kind of got sucked into this whole sense of security because there were no losses,” Dimon said. “I would also say people lied. There was more and more of that in a frothy market.”
---
Dimon now admits to fraud. Greenspan admitted the same at Jekyll Island in December at the Fed's 100 year victory celebration...
While Bernanke squirms, Greenspan admits the truth...