It would be appropriate for any new legislation to ensure that all individual brokers are included in the same nationwide registry. The Mortgage Reform and Anti-Predatory Lending Act of 2007 also addresses concerns about loans made without consideration of a borrower's ability to repay.
The Board firmly believes that lenders should give due consideration to a borrower's ability to repay a loan, before the loan is extended. We and the other regulators have emphasized this several times in a variety of guidance statements on mortgage lending. This is also one of the areas we are looking at in our revisions to the HOEPA rules.