Risk retention will establish a necessary sense of ownership and responsibility at the origination end of the home loan process. But any risk retention debate is incomplete unless policymakers give equal weight to time to the need for transparency. One doesn’t work without the other. Investors in mortgage securities, once that market begins to function on it's own again, will have to be able to look at every single loan that makes up the package. Investors will need a reliable monitoring system that allows them to look at the performance and payment stream of each mortgage.
That hasn’t existed in the past and the absence of transparency was as much a culprit in the housing collapse as the lack of skin in the game. Crafters of the systemic regulator bill should keep that in mind....