You may have heard before about the warnings issued by Born, the head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the 1990s, and Bair, the chairwoman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. from 2006 to 2011.
Bies’ concerns, however, came to light recently when the Federal Reserve released transcripts of its policy meetings from 2006, a full two years before the crisis exploded.
Bies was a central bank board member from 2001 to 2007. Several times in the transcripts she said she was worried about the housing bubble.
Bies warned fellow board members that exotic mortgages — for instance, negative amortization loans in which balances become bigger and not smaller over time — were too dangerous for consumers.
She warned about the Wall Street-created securities backed by risky mortgages.
Jesse Litvak was ecstatic. It was March 31, 2010, and the mortgage bond trader at Jefferies...
