Feds eye Wall St subprime complicity

On April 16 federal bank regulators will hold a meeting with Wall Street firms and other mortgage company backers to attempt to determine whether investor demand resulted in lax underwriting standards and too much consumer access to credit. “I think securitization has been positive in making credit more available,” said Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Chairman Sheila Blair, but because of “investor appetite for these assets, I think there is a real question about to what extent the problem we are seeing with underwriting standards has been fueled by that.” more [WSJ]