Fraud and folly: The untold story of General Electric’s subprime debacle

By Michael Hudson
6:00 am, January 6, 2012 Updated: 10:59 am, January 6, 2012

 

For General Electric Co., hawking subprime mortgages was a long way from making light bulbs and jet engines.

That didn't stop the industrial giant from jumping into the subprime business in 2004, lending blue-chip respectability to the market for risky home loans by paying roughly half a billion dollars to buy California-based WMC Mortgage Corp.