“We were strict on our clients and wouldn’t tai stated only loans”
You were far more responsible than a lot of people I know. I had friends, neighbors and customers who were in the subprime business right from the start. Orange County CA was the epicenter of the whole madness.
I used to pick their brains to learn what was going on because it didn’t make sense to me. It became apparent that we were in a bubble and headed for big trouble but I sure didn’t expect it to have a global impact.
“My fear is that the pressure is building to do sub-prime again. I get e-mails once a week or so from lenders doing some crazy things.”
It could because nothing was done to prevent the same abuses from happening again. Conforming paper did well even if it was subprime, but there is no requirement for loans to be conforming. Lenders are still insulated from the performance of their own loans- before the bubble lenders typically held their own paper and had good reason to want their loans to work.
Orange county was rough but I think southwest Riverside County lead the league. We used to say that Countrywide owned Murrieta and there came a time when they did.