From Bloomberg: “…In November 2004, Hunt, now 55, joined Citi. as a vice
president in the mortgage unit. It looked like a great career move. The housing
market was booming, and the New York- based bank, the sixth-largest lender in
the U.S. at the time, was responsible for 3.5 percent of all home loans. Hunt
supervised 65 mortgage underwriters at CitiMortgage Inc.’s sprawling
headquarters in O’Fallon, Missouri, 45 minutes west of St. Louis.
Hunt’s team was responsible for protecting Citigroup from
fraud and bad investments. She and her colleagues inspected loans Citi wanted
to buy from outside brokers and lenders to see whether they met the bank’s
standards. The mortgages had to have properly signed paperwork, verifiable
borrower income and realistic appraisals.
At the mortgage-processing factory in O’Fallon, Hunt was
working on an assembly line that helped inflate a housing bubble whose
implosion would shake the world. The O’Fallon mortgage machinery was moving too
fast to check every loan, Hunt says….
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