By Greatchen Morgenson | The New York Times
Brady Dougan, now the chief executive of Credit Suisse, received internal audits saying that the mortgage unit could expose the company to “significant and unacceptable” risks, documents show. Credit Win McNamee/Getty Images
The email from a Credit Suisse executive was blunt: The bank seemed to be pushing through risky home mortgages from questionable applicants.
One borrower, the executive wrote, appeared to be a gas station attendant who was living with his mother while claiming to make $93,000 a year. Another was a former sales clerk at Nordstrom who was said to be making $110,000 a year.
A different email, from another Credit Suisse executive in June 2007, went further: “Our diligence process is such a joke.”
The emails are part of a newly released trove of internal communications and documents, mostly from 2006 and 2007, that paint a troubling picture of how Credit
Suisse, a major player in the American mortgage market, operated as the housing bubble inflated.
