With a trader's nerve and a salesman's persuasiveness, he did much more, creating the market to trade MBS and winning Washington lobbying battles to remove legal and tax barriers.
[9] In 1984, Congress passed the Secondary Mortgage Market Enhancement Act (SMMEA), overturning the previous prohibition against private banks selling mortgage-backed securities without a government guarantee.
[3][4] In March 2007, at a time when it was unknown whether or not the over-extension of leverage inherent in subprime mortgages could lead to a financial crisis, Ranieri commented "I think [the risk] is containable.
[17] Rather, he blamed Wall Street for misusing securitization to create mortgage products that homeowners were unable to afford over the long term, such as those with low 'teaser' rates that became unaffordable when they reset.
In the same interview, Ranieri also explained his firm's ongoing efforts to rehabilitate the US housing market by purchasing delinquent mortgages, working with the original homeowners to establish consistent payments, and then selling the newly stabilized loans.
[5] Ranieri received the Distinguished Industry Service Award from the American Securitization Forum in 2005 and has participated in the National Association of Home Builders Mortgage Roundtable since 1989.
[19] Ranieri has also been inducted into the National Housing Hall of Fame and received the Lifetime Achievement Award given by the Fixed Income Analysts Society, Inc.
Ranieri is portrayed by actor Rudy Eisenzopf at the beginning of the film The Big Short (adapted from Michael Lewis' book of the same name), which dramatized the events leading up to the 2007–08 housing crisis.