By Jon Prior | Politico
Moscow officials hoping to boost the Russian housing market have been visiting the United States for more than a year to learn how the American mortgage machine works.
That would be the machine that blew a gasket in 2007, causing a housing market crash that led to a financial crisis that then spurred on the deepest recession since the Great Depression. It’s also the machine U.S. lawmakers are working to replace with a new system.
But Russia is one of several countries hoping to export parts of the U.S. mortgage market back home as it remains a tantalizing model for foreign officials who want to make the dream of homeownership more widely available. Emissaries from Japan, Thailand and South Korea have also been studying how the U.S. housing market finds the money for so many loans.
