The Senate has passed an amendment to the Wall Street Reform bill that would ban loan originators from accepting compensation based on placing a consumer in a higher interest rate loan or a loan with less favorable terms.  The amendment also requires lenders to underwrite loans to assure a homeowner’s ability to repay the loan.

As you can imagine, loan originators everywhere are outraged.

Imagine not being able to earn extra compensation for selling a higher rate loan! Imagine making sure that homeowners can repay their loans! 

Wait a minute. Isn’t that the world we currently live in right now?

The horror we’re leaving behind if this amendment becomes law was the predatory lending frat parties of 2006.  From what I can tell, most (not all) of that is behind us. What are we really losing with the passage of the Merkley-Klobuchar Amendment?

Mortgage brokers have to disclose all yield spread premium earned as fee income on line 1 of the new Good Faith Estimate.  They will not be losing anything new.  It can be argued that mortgage brokers should have lost the ability to earn yield spread premium because it was horribly misused not by “an unsavory few