A great piece by Denny Hatch...
Your core business is everything. Do not neglect it.:Business Common Sense "Bear Stearns strayed from its core business.
Powered by greed, the firm got into creating indecipherably complex investment funds designed to cover the tracks of indecipherably complex consumer home loan contracts.
Nobody understood this stuff. Not Bear Stearns’ managing directors, not the sales people hawking this fatuous crap. Not the greedy investors that saw obscene returns. Not the original mortgage lenders. And certainly not the dodos who got way in over their heads borrowing to buy homes by signing adjustable rate mortgage contracts that sucked them dry.
But hey, if I was a renter and was offered a $220,000 loan to buy a $200,000 home, who is the dodo—I or the lender? I get to live like royalty, and if I find I cannot afford it, I become a “mortgage walker” who hands the house keys to the lender and says ta-ta.
The operative rule of thumb: If a thing looks too good to be true, it is."