6 - A Missed Opportunity

Summary

Chapter 6 discusses how lobbying by lenders in the U.S. Senate resulted in a vitally important missed opportunity to give a life-line to millions facing foreclosure through bankruptcy reform. Bankruptcy forgiveness could have been an immediate and highly effective strategy to deal with the millions of home foreclosures. It has become increasingly evident that, paraphrasing the words of Audre Lord, the “master’s mortgage tools,” the mortgage products and financial services that precipitated the crisis, many of which continue today, and the abusive conduct underpinning subprime lending, is a story of racism. The predatory lending resulted in massive destruction of the African-American dream of home ownership that will take decades to recover from. Yet both financial and policy responses to the crisis continue to use the same financial structures, the same market tools, and the same market players. As long as reform only tackles regulatory change that “tinkers”+L9 at the edges of the structural problems, there is unlikely to be systematic relief from inappropriate exercise of power and unlikely to be any meaningful justice for the millions of individuals harmed by predatory lending.