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Archives: June 2007
Mortgage ethics
From today's WSJ:
"Twelve years ago, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. sent a vice president to California to check out First Alliance Mortgage Co. Lehman was thinking about tapping into First Alliance's lucrative business of making "subprime" home loans to consumers with sketchy credit.
The vice president, Eric Hibbert, wrote a memo describing First Alliance as a financial "sweat shop" specializing in "high pressure sales for people who are in a weak state." At First Alliance, he said, employees leave their "ethics at the door."
The big Wall Street investment bank decided First Alliance wasn't breaking any laws. Lehman went on to lend the mortgage company roughly $500 million and helped sell more than $700 million in bonds backed by First Alliance customers' loans. But First Alliance later collapsed."
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David Pogue reaches for the funny bone
Have you watched David Pogue's NYT tech videos? 60 products. Noise cancelling headphones. And Pogue responds to a blogger's bitterness about his humor.
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Conversations and travel
Travel -- in space and ideas -- is fun. I've reconnected with Dan Gillmor, who made a great comment about the abuse of "member" by folks like Amex. And he introduced me to a new bodytracking site he's involved with, Dopplr, which allows you to see where in the world friends will be and perhaps connect with them.
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