The difference between a mortgage and many of those things you mention that getting a mortgage should be a self-regulating transaction. If I have $400,000 to lend, I am going to make sure the person getting it has the ability to repay and adequate collateral in case they don’t. I don’t need to government to tell they are a good risk.

Things went wrong when there was a complete disconnect between those approving loans and those bearing the risk of bad loans.