Wallison notes that default rates on residential mortgages were much higher than investors had expected. He attributes the high rate of default to the large number of risky loans, as estimated by Pinto. But Pinto's estimate is much higher than other analysts. (For example, it is 5 times the count estimated by the GAO.) Defenders may claim that the Wallison/Pinto estimates are in fact more accurate than the others, and that if buyers had clearly understood the risks they were taking then a crisis might have been avoided. But this claim is not justified by later events. The loans that are risky according only by Pinto did not go into default at the same rate as loans generally considered risky. |