What We're Hearing

If it's late February that means it's time for the 38th annual 'Midwinter Housing Finance Conference' in Park City, where the mortgage industry's 'movers and shakers' gather for three days of skiing and industry gossip. The conference ends on Sunday and the keynote speaker is the nation's top GSE regulator James Lockhart. In attendance is none other then Adam Bass, once the vice chairman of Ameriquest Capital Corp. During the height of the subprime boom ACC controlled one of the nation's more (shall we say) "interesting" subprime lenders, Ameriquest Mortgage. National Mortgage News correspondent Lew Sichelman said he'll be having dinner with Bass at the meeting. It was three years ago that Ameriquest agreed to pay $325 million to the states to settle allegations that its retail loan officers engaged in abusive lending practices. (Critics should keep that in mind when blaming loan brokers for the mortgage mess.) Ameriquest was the brainchild of the late Roland Arnall. The lender's rise and fall is detailed in the book, "Chain of Blame, How Wall Street Caused the Mortgage and Credit Crisis." By the way, Ameriquest used to sell and securitize its subprime loans through Greenwich Capital, which in turn is owned by Royal Bank of Scotland which (now) is 70% owned by the British government. Greenwich now employs some former mortgage traders from Bear Stearns. Funny world we live in…