Funny Money Friday: Icon of the Mortgage Bubble

Money doesn't have to be boring! Each week, CreditBloggers.com takes a look at the lighter side of the personal finance world in a series called Funny Money Friday.

Big economic bubbles seem to always come with mascot or posterchild. For the dot com bubble, the Pets.com sock puppet became an icon for internet companies that were all marketing and no sense. For the 1920's stock bubble, it was the flashy Jay Gatsby. For the 1637 tulip mania, there was the red and white tulip bulb, Semper Augustus, that sold for 6,000 florins when the average yearly income was around 150.

What will emerge as the icon for the housing bubble? I'm putting my money on Ameriquests' "Don't Judge" advertising campaign.

Ameriquest was the nation's largest subprime lender. And they put on an extensive television advertising campaign with the tag line "Don't Judge too Quickly, We Won't". The funny ads presented people being inaccurately judged when caught in embarrassing situations and ended with the phrase "Ameriquest. An open-minded, equal opportunity lender." Here's a sample:

The idea being that Ameriquest understands your embarrassing financial situation and will still give you a mortgage loan. Marketing genius!....Until the company started a tailspin in 2006 with predatory lending lawsuits and big layoffs. In September 2007, Ameriquest stopped taking new loan applications. They were officially #41 on the Mortgage Implode-o-Meter.

It turns out that judging is kind of an important part of the mortgage process. You might know it better by it's other name: underwriting.

Emily Davidson – A former TransUnion insider and a member of Credit.com's expert team. Emily writes about credit reports, credit cards, loans and personal finance as the CreditBloggers.com editor.