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By Cathy Wilkerson
$17.79
$ 25.00
$22
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Poster Boy NYC (CC BY 2.0)
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Banks gave money to needy college students without considering whether borrowers could repay, then bundled and resold the loans to avoid losing money when students defaulted—lending practices that mirror the run-up to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Posted on Jul 21, 2012
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Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)
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Did you know that it was actually jumping gas costs, and not deceptive lending practices on the part of mortgage financiers and deregulation madness on Wall Street, that got us into the recessionary quandary in which the majority of Americans still find themselves?
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AP / Cliff Owen
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On Thursday, state and federal government representatives announced that five major banks—Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Ally Financial, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase—had agreed to pay their part in a settlement of more than $25 billion stemming from the mortgage market meltdown that caused millions of Americans to lose their homes.
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AP / Manuel Balce Ceneta
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By Cora Currier, ProPublica —
Fannie and Freddie are required to help homeowners while earning profits so they can pay back the taxpayers who bailed them out. Here is our guide to the little-known federal regulator, Edward DeMarco, ultimately in charge of the two companies. You may have never heard of him, but as The Washington Post put it, he’s “the most powerful man in housing policy.”
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Flickr / respres (CC-BY)
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A joint investigation by NPR and ProPublica has rustled up some disquieting trading practices on the part of Freddie Mac that suggest the taxpayer-run mortgage company hasn’t exactly done its darndest to help struggling Americans hold on to their homes—in fact, the opposite may be more the case.
Posted on Jan 30, 2012
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Flickr / futureatlas.com (CC-BY)
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It’s a start, but let’s hope Friday’s fraud charges against six former higher-ups at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac don’t represent the only attempts that the Securities and Exchange Commission will make to hold financial executives responsible for the disastrous economic mess that’s still upon us.
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cbsnews.com
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It’s all too rare that a mainstream news network goes after just the sort of financial heavy hitters that tend to have ties to their own corporate sponsors, but thankfully, that’s what CBS News’ “60 Minutes” did last weekend with the help of two principled mortgage specialists.
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AP / J. Scott Applewhite
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By Robert Scheer — Maximizing corporate profits at taxpayers’ expense is what top CEOs are good at, and after all it was Jeffrey Immelt who presided over GE when it got so heavily into the subprime mortgage business that it needed a government bailout to avoid bankruptcy. This was before Obama made him a trusted adviser.
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Despite drawing the wrong kind of attention to themselves over the last two-plus years with news of murky dealings in “structured products” and concern over the bank’s role in the subprime mortgage crisis, execs at Goldman Sachs apparently ...
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AP / J. Scott Applewhite
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By Robert Scheer — The corruptions of journalism were on full display when CNN’s Fareed Zakaria turned to Robert Rubin this past Sunday for advice on how to fix the financial crisis that he, as much as anyone, caused.
Did you miss the live Q & A session? Listen to the podcast here.
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AP / Mark Lennihan
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In a move that may signal the beginning of the end of Goldman Sachs’ golden era, the Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil suit Friday against the banking behemoth, accusing the company of selling customers subprime mortgage derivatives ... (continued)
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AP / J. Scott Applewhite
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Former Fed chief Alan Greenspan faced the proverbial firing squad, or in this case the congressionally appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, to answer questions Wednesday about his leadership choices at the Fed with regard to some key factors that triggered the financial implosion in 2008.
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Robert Greenwald’s filmmaking team has zeroed in on the ongoing mortgage crisis in this clip illustrating the stark contrast between the fate of Wall Street bankers and that of struggling homeowners after the initial bailout money was doled out—without any requirements that those who benefited the most account for the funds or be accountable to people trying to save their homes.
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Getting a grip on the economic catastrophe that rocked the country during the fall of 2008 is no easy feat, what with so many players, back-room deals, bills, upswings and meltdowns to consider. Updated
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AP photo / Carolyn Kaster
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By Robert Scheer — Ignorance is bliss, which perhaps explains Gov. Sarah Palin being so confidently wrong about the root cause of the federalization of most of the nation’s mortgage market. But what is Sen. John McCain’s excuse?
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Courtesy of the Brave New Films team, here we have a property-by-property breakdown of John McCain’s many fancy domiciles, which provide ironic contrast to footage of the presumptive Republican nominee holding forth about how Americans with mortgage troubles can just scrimp ‘n’ save their way back to solvency.
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AP photo / Jae C. Hong
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By Robert Scheer — This is a time to condemn the bankers, not to embrace them. They are the scoundrels who got us into the biggest economic mess since the Great Depression, lining their own pockets while destroying the life savings of those who trusted them.
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Next thing you know, they’re going to say unicorns are real, too. On an episode of Fox News’ “Special Report” late this week, Weekly Standard Editor Fred Barnes chimed in about McCain adviser Phil Gramm’s assessment that America was on the verge of a “mental recession,” calling Gramm’s statement “straight talk.”
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momocrats.typepad.com
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According to Phil Gramm, the former senator from Texas who’s now a key economic adviser to Sen. John McCain, America’s economic woes, insofar as they actually exist, are the product of some stinking thinking by “a nation of whiners” and doom-and-gloom headlines from the U.S. media.
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AP photo / Carolyn Kaster, file
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By Robert Scheer — Why not Hillary? Not my first choice—Al Gore is—but I find all of the pro-and-con debate about Hillary Rodham Clinton to be beside the point. She is, as Barack Obama said, likable enough, and the Dems are not likely to pick anyone better.
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Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
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