Susan Wachter
speaker
15 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 28 Jun
Susan Wachter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.
Appearances
What prevailed at that point were mortgages which were known as balloon mortgages or, even more descriptively, bullet mortgages.
The entire housing finance system was reinvented at that point.
And it was reinvented in a way to make it safer, more sustainable, and also, and this is key, more affordable.
The American mortgage is a unique mortgage.
It's unique in several ways.
Most other countries, the rate changes with interest rates in the overall economy.
What also makes the American mortgage unique is that it can be prepaid.
So while there's no threat of interest rates going up,
If interest rates fall, borrowers can refinance pretty inexpensively.
But in many countries, in fact, in most countries, even if you lose your home because you can't pay back your mortgage, if there's anything outstanding, and usually there is, then your wages get garnished.
So this is something which is very important to U.S.
economic democracy, the ability to start over.
And that was a nightmarish component of the American dream because not everyone could move to these newly inexpensive, affordable, beautiful suburbs where you could commute to your job, short commute, and bring up your children with a yard and with no threat to your future living.
One by one, we destroyed these sustainable factors, and we were back to the bullet loans of the Great Depression.
They transformed the American mortgage from a safe, sustainable instrument to a toxic, risky instrument, not only to the borrowers, but to the overall economy.
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